Congress demands JPC probe into Facebook's alleged bias towards BJP

Congress party sought Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) probe over the alleged spread of fake news and hatred in Facebook propagated by the Bharatiya Janata Party. Chairperson of Congress' data and technology cell Praveen Chakravarty said Facebook executives should be summoned and the matter should be investigated as it was done in the US and the UK.

New Delhi:Congress party on Friday has demanded a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) probe over allegations that the Bharatiya Janata Party used Facebook to spread hatred and fake news. The party in a letter to Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, vehemently opposed the "apparent and evident" bias of the social media platform towards the ruling party and sought an internal enquiry into the functioning of Facebook India.

While addressing a press conference, Chairperson of Congress' data and technology cell Praveen Chakravarty, said, "The world’s largest democracy is being manipulated by an American technology company. This is not anymore about the Congress Party or the BJP or even politics; this is about the sanctity of our democracy. This is about India and Indians. Are we going to accept this sort of control of our society by foreign technology companies?"

"The Parliamentary Standing Committee must summon Facebook and other executives to investigate this, just as they have done in other democracies like the US and the UK. And laws must be legislated to restrict Facebook and WhatsApp in India," he demanded.

Congress’s social media in-charge Rohan Gupta stated in his letter, "I want to bring to your notice the apparent and evident bias that your company has shown in our country towards the ruling dispensation despite their proclivity for sharing hate speech, misinformation, fake news and inflammatory content on your platform." He also mentioned that several pieces of evidence revealed in the last two years point out the company's negligence in controlling hate speech.

In February 2019, an internal report of Facebook, written by an employee based on findings of a test account, showed that after the Pulwama terror on February 14, users had seen "more images of dead people in the past three weeks than seen in their entire life" and also pointed out that the AI (Artificial Intelligence) that Facebook used was not adequate to identify vernacular languages. Seeking an internal enquiry, Gupta said, "It is your responsibility as the head of this organisation to hold those responsible for betraying our people accountable for their actions."