A file photo of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. (AFP)
Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said there are multiple cases where Facebook has been used by radical elements “whose sole aim is to destroy social order.”
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- Last update: September 1, 2020 11:30 PM IST
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The Union’s Information Technology Minister, Ravi Shankar Prasad, has written to Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, expressing concern about senior Facebook officials “officially abusing the prime minister and high-level ministers of the cabinet”. He said it is problematic when these employees do this while still working at Facebook India and managing important positions.
“It is doubly problematic when the bias of individuals becomes an inherent bias of the platform,” wrote the minister. The three-page letter came amid major controversy over the social media platform’s alleged trend toward ruling BJP, with Prasad making the exact opposite claims.
He spoke about “a concerted effort by Facebook in the run-up to the 2019 general election to remove pages or substantially reduce their reach, but also not offer any recourse or right of appeal to affected individuals who support the ideology of the right of center.” He added that dozens of emails written in this regard to the social media giant have not received a response. However, there were attempts through “selective leaks” to portray a different reality, he wrote.
The “interference in the Indian political process through gossip, whispering and innuendo is reprehensible. This collusion by Facebook with the international media is giving free passage to malevolent vested interests to launch slurs on the democratic process of our great democracy”, Prasad said.
He said there are “credible media reports” about Facebook India’s managing director and other senior officials belonging to a particular belief and that people of this political disposition have been “overwhelmingly defeated in successive free and fair elections.”
“People who work in any organization may have their individual likes or dislikes, but that should have nothing to do with public policy and the performance of the organization,” added Prasad.
The Union minister further said that he would like to point out several cases in which the social media platform has been used by radical elements “whose sole objective is to destroy social order” to recruit people and rally them for violence.
Stating that no meaningful action has yet been taken against those elements, he asked whether the “very created groups that have an incentive to stoke violence and political instability in India are holding it back.”
Another problem raised by Prasad is the outsourcing of fact-checking services to third parties, which he called “shady organizations without credibility.” He said that “vigilante volunteers” have to regularly verify the facts of these groups, adding that much “misinformation” about COVID-19 and its consequences has not been controlled. He said that an organization like Facebook with a transnational presence and a broad user base cannot be immune to local sensitivities.
Congress has been targeting the ruling camp after articles published in the US media suggested Facebook’s bias towards posts belonging to BJP members or right-wing groups. On Wednesday, a meeting of a parliamentary committee, headed by Congressman Shashi Tharoor, will be held where the issue of Facebook India’s alleged bias towards the BJP, and reports from its head of public policy, Ankhi Das, will be addressed. supports Prime Minister Narendra Modi and disqualifies the opposition in internal messages, they are likely to be raised.
Prasad said it appeared that “deep-seated vested interests are not satisfied with the reduction of space on one side of the spectrum in India and want to strangle it completely.”
He said that only an “internal power struggle” could “explain how events are being manipulated by selective leaks within his company to try to represent an alternate reality.” He ended his letter with a call for Facebook to establish country-specific community guidelines that respect India’s social and religious diversity.
“I hope you are aware that this experiment must not be allowed to be hijacked by a pressure group that abhors free speech and tries to impose a worldview and rejects diversity,” Prasad wrote.
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