Delhi peace panel takes note of Facebook row
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New Delhi: The Delhi Assembly has now jumped to the bandwagon by deciding to summon Facebook officials to ascertain the alleged complicity of its officials.
The Delhi Legislative Assembly's Committee on Peace and Harmony has received multiple complaints addressed to its Chairman Raghav Chadha, underscoring the alleged instances of intentional and deliberate inaction on the part Facebook to enforce its policies against inflammatory and hateful contents citing a report by the The Wall Street Journal.
The committee convened its meeting on Tuesday where journalist Paranjoy Guha Thakurta and Nikhil Pahwa were present as "expert witnesses" along with other journalists.
The witnesses have deposed that Facebook is not as agnostic and content neutral as it claims to be and there are some circumstantial evidences which reflect a collusion between the Facebook and the ruling BJP government.
The witnesses deposed before the committee that top Facebook official, Ankhi Das, along with another senior Facebook official allegedly have close links with the BJP which the committee thinks need to be "investigated".
Guha alleged that "all the incidents of mob lynching, hate crimes, communal disharmony which took place in the past 6-7 years have allegedly seen their genesis coming from fake/false scandalous and inflammatory news circulated on social media platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp".
The need of "immediate investigation by independent investigating agencies" to probe the role of Facebook's alleged inaction in the aggravation of 2020 Delhi riots was also raised during the meeting.
Claiming that community standard guidelines, which are a comprehensive set of rules claimed to be uniformly applied by Facebook globally, have allegedly not being applied in India, the witnesses further deposed that there are "sufficient circumstantial evidences which show an alleged unholy nexus between the ruling dispensation and Facebook and highlighted the complicity of Facebook in forwarding a certain narrative at the cost of suppressing contrasting narratives, thus reducing the visibility of the content critical of the ruling dispensation".
The committee will soon issue notices to top officials of Facebook with a view to examine them on record.
