New Delhi: India on Tuesday raised the issue of free speech with Facebook, alleging that the platform is the “latest tool” being used to create “internal divisions and social disturbances” by vested groups, reported Hindustan Times (HT).
Union IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad wrote a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in which he raised the need for “country specific community guidelines and said that as a transactional digital platform, Facebook must not only be fair and neutral, but also visibly seen to be so,” HT reported.
The controversy began with a report in the Wall Street Journal. It alleged that Facebook showed a bias in not taking down content from the BJP supported pages or accounts that flouted norms and that its head of public policy in India, Ankhi Das, showed support for the BJP.
“I have been informed that in the run-up to 2019 general elections in India, there was a concerted effort by Facebook Indian management to not just delete pages or substantially reduce to reach but also offer no records or right of appeal to affected people who are supportive of the right of the Centre ideology. I’m also aware that dozens of emails written to Facebook management received no response,” the letter said, HT reported.
Other issues mentioned in the letter include the platform being “used by anarchic and radical elements whose sole aim is to destroy social order, to recruit people and to assemble them for violence” and “outsourcing of fact-checking to third-party fact-checkers.”
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