Facebook Row: IT Minister RS Prasad Writes to Mark Zuckerberg, Says Problematic When FB Employees Abuse PM Narendra Modi 'On Record'
Prasad, in his letter, claimed that Facebook employees were found abusing Modi and "other senior Cabinet Ministers on record" even as they are working in India. The Minister, who heads the Law and Information Technology (IT) Ministries, said such behaviour is unacceptable.
New Delhi, September 1: In a new twist to the alleged Facebook-political nexus controversy, Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad sent a letter to company's chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg to mark his dissent. Prasad, in the strongly-worded note sent to the Facebook CEO, said it is "problematic" for India if employees of the social media giant abuse Prime Minister Narendra Modi "on record". Facebook-WhatsApp Row: Rahul Gandhi Demands Probe into Operations of Social Media Giant in India.
Prasad, in his letter, claimed that Facebook employees were found abusing Modi and "other senior Cabinet Ministers on record" even as they are working in India. The Minister, who heads the Law and Information Technology (IT) Ministries, said such behaviour is unacceptable.
See Letter Written by RS Prasad to Zuckerberg
Prasad further complained of alleged targeting of social media pages that were involved in propagating the right and right-of-centre political ideologies. The "biased" action was taken in run-up to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the Minister noted.
"I've been informed that in run up to 2019 Lok Sabha polls, there was concerted effort by FB India to not just delete pages or substantially reduce their reach but also offer no right of appeal to affected people who were supportive of right-of-centre ideology," he said.
The letter by Prasad to Zuckerberg comes amid back-to-back reports of the Wall Street Journal which alleged a nexus between Facebook India and the Centre-ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The reports claimed that FB India policy director Ankhi Das had - allegedly due to her ideological affiliations - refrained from pulling down pro-BJP pages that were red-flagged internally for spreading hatred.
The reports prompted a parliamentary panel led by Shashi Tharoor, a member of the Opposition Congress party, to raise the issue. Tharoor demanded a parliamentary investigation into the alleged political nexus. The Congress MP was countered by his BJP counterpart Anurag Thakur, who is also part of the panel on IT affairs. Thakur claimed that Facebook has been targeting more number of pages that are affiliated to the right-wing.
(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Sep 01, 2020 06:30 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).