Ahead of the Assembly elections of 2021 in West Bengal, the state\u2019s ruling party Trinamool Congress has written a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, accusing the company of bias and pointing out \u201clink\u201d between the company and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). This is the third letter received by Facebook on being accused of \u201cpolitical bias\u201d. Trinamool Congress has said that there is enough evidence in the public domain to substantiate the allegations.<\/p>\n
Trinamool Congress MP Derek O\u2019Brien, who wrote to Facebook, has referred to raising the concerns earlier too. The Leader of the AITC Parliamentary Party, Rajya Sabha, addressed Zuckerberg in the letter stating \u201cWe the All India Trinamool Congress (AITC), India\u2019s second-largest opposition party, have had serious concerns about Facebook\u2019s role during the 2014 and 2019 General Elections in India. After careful consideration, the AITC raised this issue in June 2019 in a forum no less than the Parliament of India. This was done during the discussion on the Motion of Thanks to the President\u2019s Address.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added in the letter that \u201cWith the elections in the Indian state of West Bengal just months away, your company\u2019s recent blocking of Facebook pages and accounts in Bengal also points to the link between Facebook and the BJP. There is enough material now in the public domain, including internal memos of senior Facebook management to substantiate the bias.\u201d<\/p>\n
O\u2019Brien also added that he had expressed concerns on some of these issues, \u201cin the interest of transparency, to investigate these serious charges against Facebook\u2019s senior management in India. \u201cPlease do all it takes to urgently work towards maintaining the integrity of your platform in the Indian electoral process.\u201d<\/p>\n
In an earlier letter, he had mentioned about \u201cthe removal of hundreds of Trinamool Congress supporters\u2019 pages and accounts on both Facebook and WhatsApp for community standard violations.\u201d He alleged that various such accounts were banned in the run-up to the foundation day of the party\u2019s youth wing on August 28.<\/p>\n
Interestingly though, Facebook has not only received similar letters accusing it of bias from the Congress but also from the BJP. On Tuesday, Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, in a letter to Mark Zuckerberg, alleged that Facebook employees \u201care on record abusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi and senior cabinet ministers\u201d.<\/p>\n
Earlier the Congress wrote to Facebook on US media reports suggesting Facebook\u2019s bias while handling posts from members of the BJP. In a report, the Wall Street Journal had alleged that Ankhi Das, head of public policy in Facebook India, \u201cmade internal postings over several years\u201d on her support for the BJP.<\/p>\n
Officials of Facebook on Wednesday are scheduled to meet a panel headed by Congress\u2019 Shashi Tharoor to respond to some of the allegations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With elections in Bengal months away, the company\u2019s recent blocking of pages and accounts in Bengal points to the link, alleged Trinamool.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":279,"featured_media":10244,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,6],"tags":[387,57,47,424,425,49,423,162,46,403],"adace-sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-10243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nation","category-politics","tag-assembly-elections-2021","tag-bjp","tag-congress","tag-derek-obrien","tag-facebook","tag-mamata-banerjee","tag-mark-zuckerberg","tag-social-media","tag-trinamool-congress","tag-west-bengal-politics"],"yoast_head":"\n