NEW DELHI: Social media giant
Facebook said on Monday that it prohibits hate speech and content that incites violence and enforces these policies globally without regard to anyone’s political position or party affiliation.
“We're making progress on enforcement and conduct regular audits of our process to ensure fairness and accuracy,” a Facebook spokesperson said on Monday in reaction to a report in the Wall Street Journal claiming that the company ignored applying its hate speech rules to politicians of the BJP.
Facebook refused to remove anti-Muslim posts to not upset Modi govt: WSJSeizing on the report, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi accused the BJP and RSS of spreading "fake news" using Facebook and WhatsApp to influence the electorate, triggering a sharp counter-attack from Union IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad who reminded the opposition party of the Cambridge Analytica issue.
In another set of development, Facebook's director of public-policy for India, South and Central Asia, Ankhi Das has filed a complaint at Cyber Cell Unit, Delhi Police against a number of people for issuing violent life threats through online posting/publishing of content.
Meanwhile, the Congress demanded a probe by a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) into the charges mentioned in the WSJ report, saying they threaten the foundation of Indian democracy and need to be investigated.
Responding to Congress MP Rahul Gandhi, who shared media reports and alleged that BJP and the RSS control Facebook and Whatsapp in the country, party MP Shashi Tharoor on Sunday had said that the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology would certainly wish to hear from Facebook about the media reports.
"The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology would certainly wish to hear from @Facebook about these reports & what they propose to do about hate-speech in India," Tharoor said in reply to Rahul Gandhi's tweet.
Union law minister Prasad dismissed Rahul's protest over allegations that BJP manipulated data with Facebook and WhatsApp as the "gripe of a sore loser", while BJP’s IT cell chief Amit Malviya said the social media site had actually taken down 700 pro-right wing pages ahead of the 2019 polls.
“Losers who cannot influence people even in their own party keep cribbing that the entire world is controlled by BJP and RSS,” Prasad said. “You were caught red-handed in alliance with Cambridge Analytica and Facebook to weaponise data before the elections and now have the gall to question us,” he added.
Facebook Inc's WhatsApp, which counts India as its biggest market with 40 crore users, is waiting for regulatory clearances to launch a payment platform.
It has invested $5.7 billion (Rs 43,574 crore) in Reliance Industries' digital unit, with the aim of serving small businesses across India.
(With agency inputs)
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