NEW DELHI: In the midst of a raging controversy over political bias and interference in Facebook At the urging of its top Indian officials, the government on Tuesday wrote a strong letter to the founder of the social media giant. Mark Zuckerberg, accusing the company’s employees of “officially abusing” Prime Minister Narendra Modi and high-ranking cabinet ministers and engaging in “collusion … to smear the democratic process of our great democracy.”
The letter, written by the Minister of Telecommunications and IT Ravi Shankar Prasad, accused the company’s top management of bias and said that the platform was “hijacked by a pressure group that abhors freedom of expression and tries to impose a vision of the world and rejects diversity.”
Based on credible media reports, it appears that the Facebook India team, from the India Managing Director to other senior officials, is dominated by people who belong to a particular political belief. People of this political predisposition have been overwhelmingly defeated by the people in successive free and fair elections. Having lost all democratic legitimacy, they are trying to discredit India’s democratic process by dominating the decision-making apparatus of major social media platforms. Facebook is the latest tool in your arsenal to stoke internal divisions and social unrest, “Prasad wrote.
The letter marks the deepening differences between the government and the US social media giant, which is also facing a CBI investigation into the Cambridge Analytica data breach episode. Facebook-owned instant messaging WhatsApp has also come under regulatory pressure after a series of lynching incidents across the country that were attributed in part to viral and fake messages spread on its platform. WhatsApp has steadfastly refused to share the original source of the fake messages, saying that user content on its platform is strictly encrypted.
Raising “serious concerns” about the functioning of Facebook, Prasad said his actions went against the company’s stated mission to give people “the power to build communities and bring the world closer together.”
“I have been informed that in the run-up to the 2019 general election in India, there was a concerted effort by the administration of Facebook India to not only remove pages or substantially reduce their reach, but also to offer any remedies or rights appeal to affected people who support center-right ideology. I am also aware that dozens of emails written to Facebook management received no response. The cases of bias and inaction documented above are apparently a direct result of the beliefs dominant policies of people on his Facebook India team, “he wrote.
Prasad said that while people who work in organizations are free to express their individual likes or dislikes, “that should have nothing to do with public policy and the performance of the organization.”
“It is problematic when Facebook employees officially abuse the prime minister and senior cabinet ministers of India while they are still working at Facebook India and managing important positions. It is doubly problematic when people bias becomes an inherent bias of the platform. It is unacceptable when people’s political biases affect the freedom of expression of millions of people, “he said.
The angry letter comes in the wake of reports in the US media about Facebook’s alleged bias to BJP. Opposition parties jumped into the reports based on emails allegedly exchanged between Facebook staff, sparking a fight that is expected to dominate a meeting of the parliamentary panel on TI on Wednesday.
Prasad said stories and leaks in recent media reports showed that “deep-seated vested interests are not satisfied with the reduction of space for one side of the spectrum in India and want to strangle it entirely.”
The minister also accused the platform of keeping silent even in the face of “multiple recent instances in which Facebook has been used by anarchic and radical elements whose sole objective is to destroy social order, recruit people and rally them for violence.”
He said local sensitivities need to be factored into the Facebook community guidelines, which should recognize the diversity aspect. “To respect the social, religious, cultural and linguistic diversity of India, Facebook should implement country-specific community guidelines.”
.
