Meta’s public policy head for India has apologised a day after a BJP parliamentarian threatened to summon the firm over its CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s inaccurate suggestion that the Narendra Modi government lost the 2024 general election.
In a podcast on January 10, Zuckerberg had said: “2024 was a very big election year around the world and all these countries, India, had elections. The incumbents basically lost every single one. There is some sort of a global phenomenon — whether it was because of inflation or the economic policies to deal with Covid or just how the governments dealt with Covid.”
Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw flagged the error on Monday and, a day later, BJP Lok Sabha MP Nishikant Dubey said a parliamentary committee that he heads would summon Meta.
On Wednesday, Meta India vice-president Shivnath Thukral posted on X: “Dear Honourable Minister @AshwiniVaishnaw, Mark’s observation that many incumbent parties were not re-elected in 2024 elections holds true for several countries, BUT not India. We would like to apologise for this inadvertent error. India remains an incredibly important country for @Meta and we look forward to being at the heart of its innovative future.”
Vaishnaw had tweeted to Meta on Monday: “Mr Zuckerberg’s claim that most incumbent governments, including India in 2024 elections, lost post-COVID is factually incorrect.
“From free food for 800 million, 2.2 billion free vaccines, and aid to nations worldwide during COVID, to leading India as the fastest-growing major economy, PM Modi’s decisive 3rd-term victory is a testament to good governance and public trust.
“@Meta, it’s disappointing to see misinformation from Mr Zuckerberg himself. Let’s uphold facts and credibility.”
While the Modi government was elected for a third straight term last summer, the BJP ended up 32 seats short of majority, leaving it dependent on allies for the first time in a decade.
Dubey, head of the parliamentary standing committee on communication and information technology, had quoted Vaishnaw on Tuesday and posted on X: “My committee will call @Meta for this wrong information. Wrong information in any democratic country tarnishes the image of the country. That organisation will have to apologise to the Indian Parliament and the people here for this mistake.”
Meta has not always been so prompt in acting on politics-related complaints, amid suggestions that it tends to be softer on the Right wing.
In 2022, Sophie Zhang — a former data scientist with Meta-owned Facebook — had revealed that the social media giant had ignored her recommendations for action against inauthentic accounts linked to a BJP parliamentarian, Vinod Sonkar, in 2019 and 2020.
Inauthentic Facebook accounts are ones operated by users who are not the people the account purports to represent. Operating them is not illegal but considered unethical as it drowns out the voices of the real users.
Zhang’s documentation shows that Thukral had approved action against fake clusters linked to three Congress MLAs in Punjab in 2020.
She said: “The same level of evidence (that was found against Sonkar) was more than sufficient for Shivnath Thukral to personally approve action against the employees of multiple Punjab Congress MLAs.”
Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla did not allow the parliamentary panel on communication and IT — then headed by Congress MP Shashi Tharoor — to summon Zhang in 2021. Thukral dismissed her allegations in his deposition to the panel.
The same year, Zhang told the British parliament that Facebook was “allowing authoritarian governments to manipulate political discourse” which “has led to the political turmoil including loss of life, and harassment…"
