Is Facebook Supporting Ruling BJP in India?

By Muhammad Umair*

In the world full of wonders and new generation addicted to social media, everyone is covetous to know about the happenings across the globe. No one has enough time to read the newspaper, watch television and verify the news. One can get the updates whether it’s studying, dealing, travelling, hunting, or any other activity. A lot of news resources exist there, the main source in the modern age is social media. Various applications are being used as a source of current affairs in the world. So, in order to obtain better access to the world, everyone prefers social media e.g. Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube instead of reading the newspaper without knowing actual facts and figures. Social apps especially; Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram are being owned and controlled by a single owner. It has been such a profitable and powerful business spread around the world. India is a huge market in such a business. As there is a lot of fake stuff, one can easily be trapped through it and authorities are playing the role of spectators.

In the reign of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) headed by Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, the rights of minorities are ruined. Whether it is a matter of Muslims, Sikhs Christians, Dalits and other minorities, Indian’s Hindus treated extremely worst. Mainly Muslims are being victimized by such extremists. On the other side, the extremely strict lockdown has been imposed in Kashmir by the Indian military for more than one year. Human rights violations are on the peak. The Indian military has surrendered the Kashmiris in their homeland, no activities are being done by the Kashmiris. That’s such a horrific situation for the welfare countries and NGOs working on human rights.

Recently, an Indian extremist, lawmaker T Raja Singh from Telangana state upload such Anti-Muslim posts and in response, Facebook deleted those posts by claiming the violation of hate speech rules. In opposition to this step Indian executive of the firm threatened the employees of Facebook by saying that the deletion of the posts of BJP’s members would damage their business in the country. Further, it is stated that opposition MP’s raised voice for investigation and opposition leader Rahul Gandhi claimed that BJP is controlling Facebook in the country by spreading fake news and hate speech. An Indian Information Technology (IT) minister, Ravi Shankar responded to Rahul Gandhi by saying,

                “Losers who cannot influence people even in their own party keep cribbing that the entire world is controlled by BJP & RSS. You were caught red-handed in alliance with Cambridge Analytica & Facebook to weaponise data before the elections & now have the gall to question us?”

India is the biggest market of Facebook across the world. There are more than 336 million Facebook users and more than 400 million WhatsApp users in the country. If BJP controls these social apps then data of Pakistan’s users can be easily hacked and used for any horrific purpose. Recently, in April Facebook invested $5.7 bn in a mobile internet company named Reliance Jio, owned by Mukesh Ambani, the richest person of India. It can be seen that if Facebook would deny obeying the order of BJP’s leader, there could be a huge loss for the company. How can a firm bear such a huge loss? Being avoided by the loss, Facebook obeyed the BJP’s order. It can be profitable for the company but not for the rest of the world. Violation of human rights is hidden by such mafia. Hindu extremists are being represented innocent to the world through this platform.

Moreover, Andy Stone a spokesman of Facebook claimed that they are working sincerely against any violence of hate speech and any other stuff across the globe. In addition, they claimed that they are exceptional of such affiliations with any influencing political or governing party. T Raja Singh is not an individual in this conspiracy but the whole party could be involved, claimed the opposition of Ankhi Das; an executive of the company in the country said Mr. Andy. On the other side, T R Singh claimed that his Facebook account was being hacked by some hackers in 2018 whether that was misused or not he was not sure about that and claimed that he reported to Cyber Crime detectives. Exception, Mr. Singh, the legislator of BJP said that there are anti-social in the community, so he talks to them in their language. In public meetings, he talks in style so one of his followers may upload the video of that speech. He revealed that his Instagram account is still active but not operated by him.

It is not the first time that Facebook is favoring the Indian Government. In the past, a series of articles are published about the issue. Numerous journalists revealed the relations and meetings of Indian Govt. and Facebook officials. Praveen Chakravarty, the chief of data analytics of Congress Party revealed that he met with senior Facebook officials in the US and talked about the biased partnership with their Indian Government. Similarly, Shashi Tharoor, a dominant MP of Congress party and chairman of the committee on IT believes that recent revelations require investigation.

Besides, still there is a lot of stuff on the social app to take action against violations. In the latest biannual Community Standards Enforcement report Facebook claimed that they had taken action against more than 20 million pieces of hate speech content which caused the violations in the community between January and March. But in its biggest market across the globe, there is a need for special strictness to avoid such irrelevant and hate speech against human rights and violations.

*Muhammad Umair is an engineer by profession and also writes as a freelancer with having a keen eye on South Asian Politics.

The post Is Facebook Supporting Ruling BJP in India? appeared first on KashmirWatch.

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