Over a year before The Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook had ignored its own rules against hate speech to allow posts from the Hindutva ecosystem that incited violence, Trinamul Congress leader Derek O’Brien had flagged the issue in the Rajya Sabha.
On June 25, 2019, O’Brien used his party’s intervention in the motion of thanks to the President’s address to allege a nexus between Facebook and the BJP and coined a new expansion for NDA — “Non-Disclosed Alliance”.
“The NDA (National Democratic Alliance) also had a hidden partner, ‘Non-Disclosed Alliance’. I am not here to promote a book. It is ‘The Real Face of Facebook in India’. You won’t read about this in newspapers, you won’t see this in the television channels because it tells a sordid story,’’ O’Brien said. He flashed the book, written by Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, in the House.
“Facebook’s senior management in India are de facto campaign managers for the BJP. Facebook’s Delhi office is virtually an extended BJP IT cell, and, I am saying this with all responsibility, Facebook censored anti-BJP news and put other parties in jeopardy. The Facebook algorithm censors anti-BJP content,’’ the MP continued.
“Now, I come to WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook. I don’t want to dwell on WhatsApp. Everybody knows about WhatsApp. I have got one lovely quote of September 2018. ‘We are capable of delivering any message we want to the public whether it is sweet or sour, true or fake; we can do this only because we have 32 lakh people in our WhatsApp groups. This is how we can make everything viral. Wow.’ The person who said this in September 2018 is now the home minister of India. Where are we headed? And, of course, in return, the Facebook got a lot of other benefits.”
CPM back JPC call
The CPM on Monday joined the Congress in demanding a JPC probe into Facebook’s alleged interference in India’s electoral process. The CPM politburo said the WSJ expose confirms the overall apprehensions over Facebook’s activities across its three platforms; the other two being WhatsApp and Instagram.
“A stinging exposure by New York Times in 2018 revealed its questionable practices. This exposure raises serious questions about the huge social media investment and operations of the BJP and its role in promoting hate between communities.
“The recent investment of Facebook in Reliance strengthens the apprehension of monopoly control, especially in the absence of an effective social media internal regulatory oversight.
“The huge financial resources at the disposal of BJP, aided further by the opaque electoral bonds scheme, completely ensures its control over social media,’’ the politburo noted, and said all this warrants a detailed probe.
Meanwhile, the parliamentary standing committee for information technology has begun drawing representations for a probe after chairman Shashi Tharoor said his panel would like to hear from Facebook what it had to say about the expose.
