Amid a controversy over its alleged bias in implementing its own hate speech rules in India, Facebook has banned BJP leader T. Raja Singh from its platforms for ‘violating its policy on content promoting violence and hate’.
Also read: We take allegations of bias seriously, Facebook tells Congress
“We have banned Raja Singh from Facebook for violating our policy prohibiting those that promote or engage in violence and hate from having a presence on our platform. The process for evaluating potential violators is extensive and it is what led us to our decision to remove his account,” a Facebook spokesperson said.
The action comes after The Wall Street Journal alleged that Facebook violated its own hate speech rules in favour of some individuals, including those associated with the BJP. This was done after opposition from Ankhi Das, head of public policy at Facebook India.
Ms. Das had reasoned that punishing violations by politicians from the BJP “would damage the company’s business prospects in the country”.
The report had also highlighted posts by Mr. Singh that labelled “Muslims as traitors” and asked that “Rohingya refugees in India should be shot”.
Also read: Regulation of political content | Facebook employees internally question policy
Ankhi Das’s posts
A separate report by the paper said Ms. Das, over the past years, had shown support for the BJP via posts in a Facebook group for employees, while disparaging the opposition. For instance, the day before the BJP won the 2014 national election, Ms. Das said, “We lit a fire to his social media campaign and the rest is of course history.”
In a separate post on the defeat of the Congress, she wrote: “It’s taken 30 years of grassroots work to rid India of state socialism finally”.
Responding to the allegations, Facebook India Vice-President and Managing Director Ajit Mohan had said that they were “non-partisan” and denounced hate and bigotry in any form.
Also read: Police ask FB, Twitter for details in Ankhi Das case
“There is no place for hate speech on our platform. We have an impartial approach to dealing with content and are strongly governed by our community standards. We enforce these policies globally without regard to anyone’s political position, party affiliation or religious and cultural belief,” he had said.
House panel meet
On Wednesday, Facebook India officials were grilled by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology on safeguarding citizens’ rights and prevention of misuse of social/online news media platforms, including special emphasis on women’s security in the digital space.
Facebook India officials, including Mr. Mohan, were caught in the middle of a shouting match between the Opposition and the BJP members as each side blamed the social media giant for alleged bias towards the other.
Prasad’s letter to Zuckerberg
Recently, Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad wrote to Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, raising “serious concerns” over concerted efforts by the platform to reduce the reach of people supportive of the “right-of-center ideology”.
Also read: Facebook — The beleaguered king of social media
The Minister highlighted that the India staff of the company was dominated by people belonging to a particular political belief, whose “political predisposition have been overwhelmingly defeated by the people in successive free and fair elections”, and who on record abuse the Prime Minister and senior Cabinet Ministers of India.
Mr. Prasad had asked Facebook to put in place country-specific community guidelines to respect the social, religious, cultural and linguistic diversity of India.
