Close on the heels of a political slugfest over a report in the Wall Stree Journal claiming that Facebook ignored applying its hate speech rules to BJP leaders in India, the social media giant has responded, claiming that "it does not distinguish political positions or party affiliations". According a report in NDTV: "We prohibit hate speech and content that incites violence and we enforce these policies globally without regard to anyone’s political position or party affiliation. While we know there is more to do, we're making progress on enforcement and conduct regular audits of our process to ensure fairness and accuracy."
On Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported that a senior Facebook executive, who oversaw operations in India, had blocked action against leaders associated with the BJP and other Hindutva groups. Ankhi Das is public policy director, Facebook, for India, South and Central Asia since 2011. Das reportedly had a role of overseeing "a team that decides what content is allowed on the platform".
The publication reported that Facebook employees had flagged inflammatory posts by T. Raja Singh. Raja Singh, a BJP MLA in Telangana, is no stranger to provocative speeches. "T. Raja Singh has said Rohingya Muslim immigrants should be shot, called Muslims traitors and threatened to raze mosques. By March of this year, they concluded Mr. Singh not only had violated the company’s hate-speech rules but qualified as dangerous, a designation that takes into account a person’s off-platform activities, according to current and former Facebook employees," the publication wrote.
Congress MP Rahul Gandhi had earlier 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.
Hitting back at the Congress, Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad tweeted about reported alliances between the party and Cambridge Analytica: "Losers who cannot influence people even in their own party keep cribbing that the entire world is controlled by BJP and RSS. 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 said.
