Political slugfest between Congress and BJP over Facebook: The story so far
Well, the Facebook row has now intensified into a full-blown war, with the two main parties in India–the BJP and the Congress– making allegations and counter-allegations over the issue.
The political slugfest started after Tharoor’s announcement that the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology would like to hear Facebook’s views on the report published in Wall Street Journal on Saturday. The report mentioned that Facebook overlooked its hate speech policies in the cases of Telangana Bharatiya Janata Party MLA T Raja Singh and three other “Hindu nationalist individuals and groups” in order to safeguard the social media platform’s business prospects.
Singh had said on Facebook that Rohingya Muslim immigrants should be shot, and had threatened to destroy mosques.
It also stated that one of Facebook’s top public policy executives in India “opposed applying hate-speech rules” to individuals linked with the BJP even though they were “flagged internally for promoting violence”.
Current and former Facebook employees told The Wall Street Journal that the decision was part of a pattern of favoritism by Facebook toward the BJP as it seeks more business in India. Facebook also took no action after BJP politicians made posts accusing Muslims of intentionally spreading Covid-19, an employee said.
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