Facebook Quizzed by Indian Parliamentary Panel Over Political Bias

Opposition lawmakers from a parliamentary panel accused Facebook on Wednesday of favouring the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) during a meeting to quiz the social media giant on its content regulation.

The IT panel, headed by lawmaker Shashi Tharoor of the opposition Congress Party, questioned Facebook's India boss Ajit Mohan for more than two hours.

It had summoned Facebook after The Wall Street Journal published a story last month saying Ankhi Das, the US tech giant's Public Policy Director for South and Central Asia, had opposed the taking down of posts by a BJP politician who labelled Indian Muslims traitors.

At the hearing, lawmakers from opposition parties, including the Congress, slammed Facebook for not taking down hate or inflammatory content posted by users with right-wing ideology or by accounts related to the BJP, at least six panel members told Reuters.

Mohan was told Facebook was biased toward the BJP as it received paid advertisements from government ministries, the sources said.

BJP lawmakers, on the other hand, accused Facebook of prejudice towards the Congress party, sources on the panel added.

Mohan gave the panel a presentation on Facebook's content polices, and re-affirmed the platform's neutrality, according to sources.

Facebook "remains committed to be an open and transparent platform", the company said in a statement issued after the meeting.

Hours before the panel hearing, a regional party governing the state of West Bengal, made public a letter which accused Facebook of being partial to the BJP, adding to the clamour of opposition voices which have been criticising the company's content regulation practices.

In a letter to Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg, dated August 31, West Bengal's ruling party, the Trinamool Congress, said the company's recent blocking of pages and accounts in the state pointed to the links it had with the BJP.

"There is enough material now in the public domain, including internal memos of senior Facebook management, to substantiate the bias," Trinamool Congress spokesman Derek O' Brien wrote in the letter.

"Please do all it takes to urgently work towards maintaining the integrity of your platform in the Indian electoral process."

West Bengal will hold state assembly elections early next year.

On Tuesday, the country's technology minister slammed Facebook for censuring content posted by users who supported right-wing ideology.

Even Facebook employees have questioned the company's content policies in the country, Reuters has previously reported.

Menlo Park, California-headquartered Facebook has previously said it is a non-partisan platform and it will remove content that violates its community standards.

The hearing ended without a resolution on Wednesday and Facebook representatives will be summoned again after the panel, whose term expires on September 12, is reconstituted, Tharoor told journalists.

© Thomson Reuters 2020

Is this the end of the Samsung Galaxy Note series as we know it? We discussed this on Orbital, our weekly technology podcast, which you can subscribe to via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or RSS, download the episode, or just hit the play button below.