On 16 Aug 2020, Rahul Gandhi on his twitter handle tweets that Facebook and Whatsapp in India are controlled by BJP and RSS organizations. He states that Facebook supports hate speech addressed by BJP and RSS.
This reminds the huge Facebook Cambridge Analytica data scandal that happened in 2018 when millions of Facebook user’s personal data was used for political advertising.
BJP had used the massive extent of social media in its every election campaign and they had used it in every state possible to change the ideologies of the people.
A report in the Wall Street Journal explained how BJP successfully runs elections campaigns using social media platforms like Facebook and Whatsapp.
The company’s top public-policy executive in the country, Ankhi Das, opposed applying the hate-speech rules to Singh and at least three other Hindu nationalist individuals and groups flagged internally for promoting or participating in violence.
— The Wall Street Journal
In the report, they’ve stated that Facebook had not deleted some hateful anti-Muslim post by T.Raja Singh, who is a lawmaker from southern Telangana. These allegations have favored the opposition to target BJP. Derek O’Brien belonging to Trinamul Congress Party claims that the “Facebook algorithm Deletes the anti-BJP news.
In response to this India’s information technology minister Ravi Shankar Parasd Tweeted about the Congress Investment with Cambridge Analytica.
India has about 340 million users of Facebook. Further, Facebook is on to invest $7.5 bn in India. This would give Facebook a major position in the Indian game of social media. Facebook said that they’ve taken strict action against the hate spreading content which violates the Facebook’s community standard guidelines
