Congress & Facebook 165/21
Yesterday Congress Party accused Facebook for influencing the Indian elections and also casting aspersion on Indian democracy, and demanded a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) probe into it. As per Congress Facebook has turned into fakebook. The fact is Facebook is facing heat from the opposition parties in India against hate speech posts on its platform. Further Congress also alleged that Facebook is acting as an ally of the ruling BJP and pushing its agenda.
The Congress spoke person referred to research documents by whistleblower Frances Haugen, who has worked with Facebook, and alleged that no decisive actions against the originator of such hate speech in Hindi & Bengali.
In their comment, the Facebook said “ that we have invested significantly in technology to find hate speech in various languages, including Hindi and Bengali. As a result the hate speeches are down to only 0.05%. Their spokeperson further added that hate speech against marginalized groups, including Muslims, is on the rise world wide, still we are improving systems to control hate speech.
The Congress spokeperson alleged that BJP workers and those of its affiliates have infiltrated into the structure and functioning of Facebook, which is totally wrong even on the part of Facebook. Further, he added that there are reports that there are over a million Facebook accounts, yet Facebook did nothing about it. That’s why we are demanding a JPC probe in this regard. “ Why should we not accuse Facebook of interfering in our elections by influencing the voting behavior of its users. This is serious election fraud by a foreign company in our elections.” He further added that based on its internal reports, despite knowing RSS and Bajrang Dal as dangerous organizations, why they have not taken any action. He went on harping on internal reports, and said Facebook is allying with BJP on ‘ quid pro quo’ basis.
The Congress spokeperson further added that only 9% users in India use English and yet Facebook do not have systems to filter the posts of regional languages.
To me it looks like, Congress party is in the habit of asking JPC on any issue, but the same issue , when it is discussed in parliament, they will not participate in debate. Agreed the Facebook was slow on blocking hate mails by users, that is the reason why Modi govt introduced new rules, which all social media companies have to comply in India. You all know what happened when these rules were introduced, initially companies like Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram & others were reluctant to comply but slowly all had to agree to implement the same. All these companies agreed to improve their system for detecting hate mails.
Secondly when the hate mail is against BJP, RSS and other such organization then why Congress keeps quiet but as soon as the hate posts are against minority communities with whom they have fond attachment, the Congress’s antennae goes up and they start saying these companies are not controlling hate mails. In my opinion the hate posts against Modi and his govt is in such a large proportion as compared to hate mails against minority communities and political parties supporting them.
The big problem which has been created by Congress over the years, any one who is not with minority communities is not secular, but they forget and ignore the feelings of majority community which forms the 80% of the population. After Modi govt came to power in 2014, slowly the majority community’s feelings are not ignored, and they are also becoming part of all govt welfare schemes, which earlier were reserved only for minority communities. Now majority community has started feeling that they will not be ignored like earlier so called secular govt used to do. So majority community also started raising voice in all the social platforms which is not liked by Congress and other like minded pseudo secular parties and their followers.
For all these, to blame social media companies are not right. Congress and other like minded parties have to change their mind set, otherwise they will be slowly facing much more problems during elections. You all must have seen how the Congress has also started appeasing Hindus, and their leaders now openly goes to various temples in UP, where elections are due shortly showing their pseudo secularism.
Only time will tell where Congress stands in national politics.
Waiting, for your feedbacks.
Anil Malik
Mumbai, India
26th October 2021.