T Raja Singh (File photo)
NEW DELHI: Facebook announced Thursday that it banned BJP politician T Raja Singh, whose alleged posts recently placed him at the center of a Wall Street Journal report and consequently in a political maelstrom, from its platform for violating its policies against Hate speech.
“We have banned Raja Singh from Facebook for violating our policy that prohibits those who promote or engage in acts of violence and hatred from having a presence on our platform. The process for evaluating potential violators is extensive and is what led us to our decision to delete your account, ”the company said in an emailed statement. Singh has been categorized as a “dangerous individual” and will not be allowed on Facebook or Instagram in the future.
Hours later, Singh claimed that he had not had a Facebook account since April 2019. He also said that he would write to Facebook to open a new account for him and promised to follow the rules. Speaking to TOI, Telangana MLA, 42, said that the pages banned by the social media site could have been created by his followers. “My official account was hacked in 2019 after the assembly elections and I had filed a complaint with the Cyberabad police. I had even sent a request to Facebook to reactivate my account, ”he said.
Singh became more focused after the Wall Street Journal reported in August that his account was not suspended despite being flagged as “dangerous” internally for allegedly spreading hatred against a minority community. Senior Facebook India executives, including head of public policy Ankhi Das, had reportedly opposed its ban, saying it would affect the company’s “business interests” in India, which is the social media company’s largest market. in terms of number of users.
On Thursday, the WSJ reported that at least five Facebook pages dedicated to Singh were suspended from the platform and displayed the message “This content is not available now” when users tried to open them. Together, these pages had more than 3,000,000 followers. “The Facebook groups dedicated to him had also disappeared. His Instagram profile displayed a message that said: Sorry, this page is not available. The link you followed may be broken or the page may have been removed, ”the WSJ article read.
Singh wondered if Facebook was operating under pressure from Congress. He said: “Since April 2019, I am not on Facebook, so the question of banning me does not arise. This is all happening because of Rahul Gandhi’s tweet some time ago. ”
The controversial lawmaker alleged that Rahul Gandhi made false statements against BJP and PM (Narendra) Modi using these social media platforms. “Congress has made me a scapegoat,” he added. “I am writing to Union IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and also to Facebook,” he told TOI.
Previously, Singh had questioned whether he or his team ran the Facebook page that shared inflammatory posts, claiming that his account had been “hacked and blocked” in 2018. But, in a tweet dated April 1, 2019, he had tweeted that Facebook had unpublished his story.
Singh has reportedly made several controversial statements in the past, such as “The Rohingya should be shot if they indulge in anti-national activities.” On November 6, 2017, the MLA had threatened to set fire to cinemas showing the movie ‘Padmavat’ in Telangana for denigrating the Rajput community in the film. Earlier, he had also said that the women in the filmmakers’ families “change husbands every day.” He later apologized for his comments.
The permanent parliamentary commission had held a hearing on “prevention of misuse of online / social media platforms” on Wednesday and questioned Facebook India Director Ajit Mohan for more than two hours. On Tuesday, Prasad had written to the boss of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg accusing the social media platform of being dominated by people with a political predisposition. On Monday, TMC politician Derek O’Brien had written a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, alleging that several pro-TMC pages had been removed from the platform prior to the West Bengal assembly elections.
Previously, Facebook has banned several extremist figures, including far-right American radio host Alex Jones, political activist Laura Loomer, who worked for a far-right Canadian website, and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, for violate their hate speech policies.
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