JOIN US'Surrogate' ads used to boost BJP on Facebook: Report
Loopholes in the implementation of a law concerning political advertisements and a selective application of Facebook’s rules and processes allowed India’s largest conglomerate Reliance to place and boost the reach and popularity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP in the run-up to the 2019 parliamentary elections and nine state elections, and denigrate the Opposition.
Facebook allowed surrogate advertisers to secretly fund BJP’s election campaigns, boosting its reach on the platform, according to a report by the Al Jazeera.
Surrogate advertisements promote a political candidate but are not directly funded or authorised by that candidate.
A Facebook page of Reliance-funded NEWJ paid lakhs to run ads such as Sadhvi Pragya being allegedly bailed in the Malegaon blast case in 2019, or Rahul Gandhi sarcastically calling terrorist Mazood Azhar "Masood Ji" to mislead readers.
The Facebook Ad Library shows that NEWJ published roughly 170 political advertisements over the three months leading up to the 2019 elections, most of which either glorified BJP leaders, projected voters’ support for Modi, stoked nationalistic and religious sentiments, or mocked Opposition leaders.
NEWJ, however, does not declare any link with the BJP and there is no public record of the party paying the publication for political advertisements, according to the report.
Publishing surrogate advertisements is a crime under Indian law, which aims to hold political parties accountable for the information they put out and prohibit using unknown sources of funds to pay for ads - but the law does not extend to digital platforms like social media, and the ECI has not rectified this loophole despite its awareness of it. For its part, Facebook too does not implement the rule.
The surrogate ads continued past the 2019 elections, and have covered events such as the protests against the controversial Citizenship (Amendment) Act and backlash against Amazon over sale of products with images of Hindu Gods on them.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi raked up the issued in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday, saying that Meta-owned social media platform is "worse for democracy". "I urge the government to put an end to the systematic interference and influence of Facebook and other social media giants in the electoral politics of the world's largest democracy. This is beyond partisan politics," she said in the Zero Hour in Parliament.
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