Facebook’s senior India policy executive Ankhi Das intervened in internal content review processes to stop a ban on BJP’s Telangana MLA T Raja Singh, who made communally charged posts targeting the Muslim community is the allegation which was proved by the Wall Street Journal, which cited interviews with unnamed Facebook insiders to claim the allegation.
In an article published late on Friday, a report suggesting Facebook was going easy on hate speeches by members of ruling Bharatiya Janata Party became the subject of a political controversy on Saturday. The Congress said that it had met and flagged similar concerns to a senior executive Ankhi Das of Facebook .
Facebook’s senior India policy executive Ankhi Das intervened in internal content review processes to stop a ban on BJP’s Telangana MLA T Raja Singh, who made communally charged posts targeting the Muslim community is the allegation which was proved by the Wall Street Journal, which cited interviews with unnamed Facebook insiders to claim the allegation.
Das, had instructed its staff members that punishing violations by politicians from Mr. Modi’s party would damage the company’s business prospects in the country.
Though Facebook has denied the allegation and said it was still reviewing whether it had to act against Singh. However, Ms. Das hasn’t responded to requests for a comment yet.
“We had met Ankhi Das over the issue and raised our concerns regarding these matters,” said a senior member of Congress’s media team, who asked not to be named.
Everyone expects that companies like Facebook, are and will be professionally run and managed. But this expose on Facebook comes as a shock to everyone.
But now it’s crystal clear that Facebook and BJP are hands in gloves to spread the venom of hate and new facts are emerging exposing the close ties of important officials of Facebook India with the BJP.
When Facebook was questioned, a Facebook spokesperson said that its policies on such matters are unbiased.
He said that they prohibit hate speech and content that incites violence and that these policies would be enforced irrespective to anyone’s political position or party affiliation.
He said that they are actually working on it but still lot more to do. He said that they were making progress on enforcement and conduct regular audits to ensure fairness and accuracy.
A BJP spokesperson declined to comment on the matter and has said that the BJP does not subscribe to the views of Singh and has distanced itself from comments that call for violence or are not in line with the party’s stance.
Ajit Mohan, the head of Facebook India, wrote an internal memo to the company’s India operations staff defending Das. “This article does not reflect the person I know or the extraordinarily complex issues we face everyday that benefits from Ankhi and the Public Policy team’s expertise,”
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