Rahul Gandhi on Facebook's 'hate-speech policy' for BJP: 'Influenced electorate with it'

Reacting to a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) report on hate-speech on Facebook, former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi, on Sunday alleged that 'BJP & RSS controlled Facebook'. He claimed that the 'American media had finally come out with the truth about Facebook'. Gandhi, who has been continually critical of the Modi government alleged that the BJP spread fake news and hatred through Facebook to influence the electorate.

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What does the WSJ report claim?

The American newspaper Wall Street Journal claimed that BJP's Telangana MLA T Raja Singh had often made communal and incendiary speeches that were posted on Facebook, clashing with the company's hate speech rules. The report claims that inspite of the posts allegedly violating Facebook's hate-speech rules and qualifying as dangerous, Facebook India's top public-policy executive Ankhi Das had claimed that punishing violations by BJP would 'damage the company's business prospects in India'. Apart from Singh, three other BJP leaders or Hindutva groups were allegedly flagged by Facebook for hate-speech.

The report further points out that Facebook has faced issues to launch its telecommunications service - Free Basics in 2016 from the Modi government, as it violated net neutrality. The report further stated that while some of Singh's posts were removed by Facebook, the social media giant has demoted Singh's account to a non-verified, unofficial account without a blue tick. Similarly WSJ pointed out that Facebook had taken no action against BJP's Ananthkumar Hegde's communal posts, but Twitter has suspended his account. 

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The report states that BJP's Kapil Mishra's incendiary speech ahead of the three-day Delhi riots was taken down by Facebook - with founder Mark Zuckerberg stating in an employee townhall that the platform would not tolerate such behaviour. Citing preferential treatment by Facebook, WSJ points to the removal of thousands of Congress-linked Pakistan military posts and several BJP-linked fake news pages prior to the Lok Sabha elections. While Facebook publically disclosed the deletion of the Congress-linked accounts, it allegedly did not disclose the removal of the BJP-linked posts. Facebook has currently invested a whopping $5.7 billion in the Mukesh Ambani-owned Jio platforms, raking a 9.9% stake in the company.

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