Facebook has responded to the hot controversy that the social media giant doesn’t properly scrutinize the hate speech posted on its platform by the members of the ruling party in India i.e. BJP.
The Mark Zuckerberg-led company said in a statement that “we prohibit hate speech and content that incites violence and we enforce these policies globally without regard to anyone’s political position or party affiliation.”
“While we know there is more to do, we’re making progress on enforcement and conduct regular audits of our process to ensure fairness and accuracy.”
This came after the Wall Street Journal published a report according to which Facebook turns a blind eye to the hateful posts published by the ruling party members. Furthermore, a Facebook executive had told its staff members that punishing such posts may even hurt its business in its biggest markets by the number of users, according to the report.
Former INC chief Rahul Gandhi was quick to criticize BJP on Twitter citing the WSJ report. He accused the ruling party of spreading “fake news and hatred through it and use it to influence the electorate.”
In return, India’s IT minister and BJP member Ravi Shankar Prasad slammed Gandhi’s tweet. “You were caught red-handed in alliance with Cambridge Analytica & Facebook to weaponise data before the elections & now have the gall to question us?” he said.
The biggest social network in the world, Facebook, often finds itself in the middle of political controversies. Possibly the biggest incident to date was the Cambridge Analytica scandal, where the data of Facebook users was used to influence the US elections.
Facebook wants us to believe that it has created an ideal world on the internet. But the hard pill is that its platforms, including Facebook and WhatsApp, act as a medium to influence people in countries like India, which may even lead to real-world violence.
According to the report, Facebook does offer customized experiences in key markets to please the political powers. For instance, it follows stricter hate-speech rules in Germany. In Vietnam, the company agreed to restrict anti-government content to stop the government from disrupting its local servers. Still, the company is yet to draw the lines that Zuckerberg once said they exist and will be enforced.
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