Congress party writes to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg over alleged bias

The Congress party in India on Tuesday shot off a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, asking him to set up a high-level inquiry in the company’s leadership team in India in the wake of a media report alleging the social networking giant’s interference in the electoral democracy in the country.

“Set up a high-level inquiry by Facebook headquarters into Facebook India's leadership team and their operations in a time-bound manner, and publish and make transparent all instances of hate speech since 2014 that was allowed on the platform. Facebook India should appoint a new team so that the investigation is not influenced,” Venugopal said in a three-page letter to Zuckerberg.

The Congress party missive came days after a report in a US media outlet claimed that Facebook deliberately ignored disruptive content from members of the BJP despite being flagged internally.

“We cannot allow any manipulation of our hard-earned democracy through bias, fake news & hate speech. As exposed by @WSJ, Facebook’s involvement in peddling fake and hate news needs to be questioned by all Indians,” Rahul Gandhi said on Twitter.

Venugopal said Congress leaders had raised issues of bias with several executives of Facebook and WhatsApp, “mostly to deaf ears”.

Congress leaders said that the party was disappointed by the revelations made in the US-based Wall Street Journal's article and added that this was a “damning and serious allegation of Facebook India's interference in India's electoral democracy.’

They have accused the BJP and the RSS of controlling Facebook and WhatsApp in India, a claim dismissed by Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad.

“Losers who cannot influence people even in their own party keep cribbing that the entire world is controlled by BJP & RSS,” Prasad said.

Venugopal said Congress and other leading political parties have also demanded a Parliamentary Committee probe into Facebook’s purported role in manipulating India’s electoral democracy.