Congress accuses BJP of using Facebook as a weapon to spread hatred
The Congress on Friday alleged that Facebook is being used as a weapon by the BJP to spread hate and fake news in the country and demanded that a JPC probe be conducted on the issue and that Facebook and WhatsApp be banned. Make laws. The party also alleged that India’s democracy was being manipulated by an American technology company and demanded that it conduct an independent investigation into the issue.
Congress leaders Rohan Gupta and Praveen Chakraborty said in a joint press conference that the time has come for the BJP to stop using Facebook as a weapon of spreading hatred that threatens the unity of the country.
The Congress also wrote to Facebook President Mark Zuckerberg, asking him to conduct an independent investigation into allegations of hate speech and fake news being spread through Facebook and WhatsApp in India.
Gupta said, “I urge you to conduct an internal inquiry into the functioning of Facebook India and release the findings to the public. As the head of this organization, it is your responsibility to punish those who have betrayed our people for their actions. be held responsible.” The head of Congress’s social media department said in his letter to Zuckerberg.
“Facebook has become a weapon of BJP in spreading hatred in the country… an attempt is being made to attack the unity of our country and everyone has to understand this and fight together,” he told reporters here.
“We demand from Facebook that there should be an independent investigation into the hate speech being spread through Facebook over the past two years and why Facebook has reduced its budget for hate speech detection and the issue has been taken up internally. Why was no action taken on the issues? your employees,” Gupta also said.
Chakraborty, head of AICC technology and data cell, said the issue regarding Facebook is very serious and everyone has to fight it together.
Citing an internal report statement, he said that after the Pulwama terror attack “an average Facebook user in India has seen more pictures of dead people in their Facebook account than they had seen on Facebook in their entire lifetime”. This is apart from what is happening on WhatsApp which is private, he said.
“The world’s largest democracy is being manipulated by an American technology company. It’s no longer about Congress or BJP or even politics. It’s about the sanctity of our democracy. It’s India and Indians Is about. Are we going to accept this kind of control of our society by foreign technology companies,” Chakraborty asked.
Observing that it is time to come together as a nation and oppose it, he said, the Parliament elected by the people of India has the responsibility to act on the issue.
“A JPC should be set up to look into this issue, as we said earlier. The Parliamentary Standing Committee should call on Facebook and other authorities to investigate this, as they have done in other democracies such as the US and the UK. And laws should be made to ban Facebook and WhatsApp in India,” Chakraborty said.
Gupta said that Facebook is betraying the trust of the country. He also said that the people of the country are also seeking answers from the BJP for using social media players to spread hatred. He also alleged that Facebook undermined its team’s internal report and reduced budget to control hate speech, despite an 80 percent increase in such content over the past few months.
Facebook used only 9 percent of its budget to try and prevent hate speech in its content, especially in Hindi-speaking India, he alleged.
In his letter to Zuckerberg, Gupta said there is a clear and clear bias that the company has shown towards the ruling government in India despite its tendency to share hate speech, misinformation, fake news and inflammatory content on your platform.
He said there is evidence that points to Facebook’s negligence in handling this hate speech and willfully ignore internal documents that raise concerns on similar issues.
“It also turns out that your cost-cutting approach towards hate reviews has led to a massive and rapid increase in such content over the past two years,” he added. The life and safety of your users in a country with over 370 million users.
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