NEW DELHI: Congress on Tuesday ramped up its demand for transparency in the operations of Facebook India and wrote to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg seeking a time-bound, high-level inquiry into allegations of right-wing bias in the social media platforms India operations.
In a letter to Zuckerberg, Congress general secretary K C Venugopal demanded that Facebook should “publish all instances of hate speech posts since 2014 that were allowed on the platform”. He also said that pending an internal investigation and submission of the report, the company should “consider a new team to lead Facebook India operations so as to not influence the probe”.
The letter came a day after Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said on Twitter that “BJP controls Facebook and WhatsApp”. On Tuesday, Gandhi shared a copy of Venugopals letter on Twitter and said, “We cannot allow any manipulation of our hard-earned democracy through bias, fake news and hate speech. As exposed by WSJ, Facebooks involvement in peddling fake and hate news needs to be questioned by all Indians.”
Referencing the August 14 Wall Street Journal story that said Facebook had flouted its own policies on hate speech and not taken down communally sensitive content by BJP leaders because doing so would hurt the social media companys business interests, Venugopal said, “Set up a high-level inquiry by Facebook headquarters into the Facebook India leadership team and their operations and submit a report to the Board of Facebook within one or two months. The report should also be made public.”
Referring to the allegations as “Facebook Indias interference in Indias electoral democracy,”Read More – Source
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