New Delhi: Facebook, which allegedly turned a blind eye towards hate speech rule violations by a BJP MLA to protect its interests in India, is facing new allegations on similar lines — that when the BJP didn’t follow its transparency requirements for political ads, the social media giant chose to ignore it.
Wall Street Journal, which made the original allegation earlier this month, reported on 30 August that Facebook India’s policy head Ankhi Das made disparaging comments about the Congress party while showing her support for Prime Minister Narendra Modi in internal messages.
“Don’t diminish him (Modi) by comparing him with INC. Ah well—let my bias not show!!!”, she is alleged to have said, which Facebook employees have said goes against the company’s pledge to be neutral when it comes to elections.
However, a Facebook spokesperson told ThePrint: “These posts are taken out of context and don’t represent the full scope of Facebook’s efforts to support the use of our platform by parties across the Indian political spectrum in 2014. Facebook’s public policy team operates with integrity and any suggestion that their efforts are motivated by partisanship discounts their hard work every day.”
Also read: ‘We are open & non-partisan, know work on hate speech is never over’ — Facebook India head
The rules allegedly violated
According to the WSJ report, Facebook took no action after discovering the BJP was not following the mandatory requirements for political ad transparency. Facebook requires buyers of political ads to verify identity and also disclose it to users.
However, the BJP had been purchasing ads worth “hundreds of thousands of dollars” through newly created entities that didn’t publicly disclose their links to the party.
“Facebook neither took down the pages nor flagged the ads,” the report said, citing former Facebook staffers based in India and the US. It only “privately raised the matter with the BJP”.
Facebook spokesman Andy Stone was quoted in the WSJ report as saying that the company had “decided not to act” after concluding the rules “hadn’t been specific enough”. However, after WSJ’s queries, Facebook will reportedly review the decision to not act against the BJP.
The report said a BJP spokesperson had not responded to WSJ’s request for comment.
Also read: Facebook’s reluctance to take down problem posts must force India towards co-regulation
Ankhi Das’s comments on Modi and Congress
The WSJ report also cited internal messages that Ankhi Das had posted between 2012 and 2014, showing her “support for the now ruling Hindu nationalist party and disparaging its main rival”.
Das had allegedly posted the messages to a Facebook group mainly meant for staffers in India, but which any employee around the world could join. The group had several hundred members at the time.
During the 2014 election, when Modi was the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, the report alleges “Ms Das made her sentiments on the race clear”.
When a colleague pointed out that the Congress’ Facebook following was bigger than Modi’s following on his individual Facebook page, Das had reportedly responded: “Don’t diminish him by comparing him with INC. Ah well—let my bias not show!!!”
A day before Modi won the 2014 election, Das had written: “We lit a fire to his social media campaign and the rest is, of course, history.”
After the BJP emerged the victor in the election, Das had written in a post: “It’s taken thirty years of grassroots work to rid India of state socialism finally.”
Ankhi Das joined Facebook in 2011 when the company was trying to show how it could be useful to politicians. During this time, the platform started training political parties in India on how to effectively use it to “mobilise supporters”.
One such training session had been organised during Modi’s 2012 bid for re-election as Gujarat chief minister. When Modi’s campaign was nearing a million Facebook fans, Das had written “success in our Gujarat Campaign”, referring to the training given to the BJP team in October 2012.
While Facebook employees have reportedly said the “actions and sentiments” ascribed to Das go against Facebook’s pledge to be neutral in elections, spokesman Andy Stone said: “These posts are taken out of context and don’t represent the full scope of Facebook’s efforts to support the use of our platform by parties across the Indian political spectrum.”
The report added that Facebook said Das’s posts “don’t show inappropriate bias”. Das did not respond to WSJ’s requests for comment.
Also read: It’s not personal, just business — Facebook-WSJ controversy isn’t unique to India, BJP
When most mainstream media, particularly the print media, has been over run by luddite liberals and selective secularists, it is interesting to read that the alternative view too has made it to social media. This is law of Karma. If you are not truly neutral, you can expect a payback.
Is The Print is acting as the mouthpiece of WSJ? These media lost their relevance.
I am not a great fan of socialist politics. But BJP’s right wing economics is worse than what the country has seen. It has been a big zero in terms of economic talent and implementation and that irony is not lost on anyone.
So will Ankhi Das be sacked? Or is she too close to the BJP leadership.
Facebook can fast become Face-palm if it tries to hoodwink Indians.
Your every story ends with asking the readers for money. Since The Print is co-owned by Kiran Majumdar Shaw, Nandan Nilekani et al, you are effectively asking an average reader to subsidize your investor millionaires/billionaires. Moreover, since you can’t afford to hurt those millionaires’ money, all you can give us is right-wing journalism coated with a thin layer of independence. Under these circumstances it is highly unethical for you to keep on badgering the readers for money.