Amid a raging political row over Facebook’s alleged bias towards the ruling BJP, Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Tuesday shot off a sharp letter to the social media giant, accusing its employees in India of “abusing” Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other senior ministers.
"I have been informed that in the run up to 2019 general elections in India, there was a concerted effort by Facebook India management to not just delete pages or substantially reduce their reach but also offer no recourse or right of appeal to affected people who are supportive of right-of-centre ideology," Prasad said in his three-page letter to Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg.
He said such “documented cases of bias and inaction” are seemingly a direct outcome of a dominant political beliefs of individuals in the Facebook India team.
"Individuals working in any organisation may have their individual likes or dislikes, but that must not have any bearing on the public policies and performance of the organisation," the IT minister said.
Prasad’s letter to Facebook comes a day before the scheduled meeting of a parliamentary panel to discuss the alleged misuse of the social media platform. The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology, headed by senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, has summoned representatives of Facebook and will hear their views.
Prasad cites “credible media reports” which claim that the Facebook India team, right from the managing director to other senior officials, is dominated by people who belong to a particular political belief. The minister stopped short of naming the Congress when he said: "People from this political predisposition have been overwhelmingly defeated by the people of in successive free and fair elections. After having lost all democratic legitimacy, they are trying to discredit India's democratic process by dominating the decision-making apparatus of important social media platforms.”
Accusing the Facebook employees of abusing the prime minister, Prasad said: "It is problematic when Facebook employees are on record abusing the Prime Minister and senior Cabinet Ministers of India while still working in Facebook India and managing important positions. It is doubly problematic when the bias of individuals becomes an inherent bias of the platform.”
A recent report in The Wall Street Journal had claimed that the Facebook ignored applying its hate-speech rules to politicians of the BJP in India, sparking off a political slugfest between the ruling party and the opposition Congress.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday claimed that international media has "exposed" Facebook and WhatsApp's "brazen assault" on India's democracy and social harmony.
