Members of India’s ruling party on Monday denied allegations that Facebook had chosen to turn a blind eye to partisan hate speech on its platform to protect its growing business interests in India.
As usage has spread across India, Facebook and its subsidiary WhatsApp have become fierce battlefields for India’s political parties, but Prime Minister Narendra Modi Bharatiya Janata’s spokesman denied a newspaper report claiming Facebook officials chose not to take action against party members whose messages broken rules against hate speech.
The party members instead accused Facebook of censoring pro-India content.
Opposition Congressman Shashi Tharoor, a Member of the Knesset for Kadima, said in a statement that the “information technology commission” he was chairing in Parliament would include the findings of the August 14 report in The Wall Street Journal. Congressman Rahul Gandhi accused the BJP of Facebook of “checking” and demanded a joint probe through the two houses of parliament.
The Wall Street Journal report said that the head of public policy, Facebook India, Ankhi Das, “opposes the application of hate speech rules” on at least four individuals and groups affiliated with the BJP, although they are “flagged internally for promotion or participation in violence “.
Modi‘S Party leaders have come under control for conducting online campaigns laced with false claims or with vitriolic attacks on India‘s minority Muslim population [File: Jeff Chiu/The Associated Press]
Tejasvi Surya, a BJP legislator and a member of the parliamentary committee on IT, rejected the idea that Facebook was showing favoritism to the ruling party, instead accusing it of being “pro-India and pro-Hindu voting censorship.”
“There are millions of messages that ridicule and abuse Hindu gods from right-wing center leaders. But Facebook’s advanced algorithms and community standards do not suit them. However, nothing to do with ordinary people who are pro- running right-of-center pages are expelled without right of appeal, “BJP lawmaker Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore wrote in an op-ed in the Indian Express newspaper.
Facebook said Monday in a statement that it bans hate speech and content that incites violence and enforces these rules worldwide “without taking into account anyone’s political position or party affiliation.”
Modi’s party leaders have come under fire for carrying out online campaigns laced with false claims or with vitriolic attacks on India’s Muslim population, and have posted videos or images ranging from accusations of Muslims to converting Hindu girls to Islam to accusations of their deliberate spread of the coronavirus.
A 2019 analysis by Equality Labs, a South Asian research organization, found that groups sharing anti-Muslim content on Facebook were supporters of Modi’s party or linked to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a Hindu nationalist paramilitary volunteer organization. and the ideological parent of the BJP.
The controversy comes as Facebook and Jio, India’s cheapest and most popular phone provider, are waiting for a green light from India’s Supreme Court to roll out WhatsApp Pay, an e – commerce and digital payment platform ready for social media to help in the trillion of India -dollar digital market.
Facebook has invested $ 5.7 billion in cash in Reliance Jio, a subsidiary of Reliance Industries, whose chairman, Mukesh Ambani, is India’s richest man.
“They are pandering to the ruling party in India because they see this as a good business opportunity. They are not worried about the ethics of what is being posted on Facebook. They are in it to make money,” said political commentator Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, the author of a 2019 book on Facebook in India.
Since coming to power in 2014, Modi’s party has been using Facebook more and more to reach voters in India. The party has its main opposition, the Congress Party, hugely outspent on social media ads.
Modi himself has an enormous following on social media and has asked the grass court activities and leaders of his party to be active on Facebook.
“BJP is far ahead of others in harnessing the power of modern communication, including social media. This applies to its presence not only on Facebook but also on other such platforms,” BJP party chairman Baijayant Panda said on Monday , pointed to a lot of video conferencing and virtual gatherings during India’s months-long coronavirus screening.
Panda and other BJP leaders said the accusation that Facebook gave the ruling party preferential votes stemmed from the political mishaps of the once-dominant Congress party in recent years.
A whistleblower at controversial data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica said in 2018 that the Congress party was a client, accusing the BJP of its rival of attempting to manipulate elections. The Congress party denied the whistleblower’s accusation.
In India’s general election in 2019, which the BJP won nationwide, Facebook, Twitter and other social media giants were asked to abide by the Indian Electoral Commission’s code of conduct, including a ban on political advertising in the country. the period of 48 hours before polling.
However, a Review Associated Press of Facebook’s advertising library showed that BJP-sponsored ads were running during the banned window in the regions where polling was planned. Advertising Sponsored ads were decreased during the same period.
Panda said the BJP had not violated the rules of the campaign.
It was unclear what, if anything, would come from the assessment of the parliamentary IT committee. Indian law explicitly prohibits hate speech, and Apar Gupta, executive director of the Internet Freedom Foundation, a digital rights group for foster families, said Indian courts could launch a criminal investigation into whether Facebook failed to act on known hate speech on its platform . Facebook could face penalties for non-compliance.
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