Over the last couple of days, the Congress and the BJP have been at loggerheads over the controversial outspread of hate speech and communal discord through Facebook. The controversy became the rage of the hour after a report that was published in the United States of America’s Wall Street Journal alleged that it was being used to spread disruptive content in India especially by the right-wing parties. The report also said that Facebook was purposefully ignoring these things and allowing its platform to be used wrongly and that the act was irresponsible.
The Congress and the BJP have been locking horns with each other over this issue and the debate has become the talk of the town. Meanwhile, the Facebook executive who is supposedly responsible for allowing the medium to be used for propagating hate has been receiving hate online and has registered a complaint with the police. The Congress and the BJP have been shifting the blame and have been accusing the opponent of manipulating Facebook for propagating their own interests. The Congress party has been strongly opposing the usage of Facebook to spread hate and its leaders such as Rahul Gandhi and Shashi Tharoor have asked for a reply from Facebook in this context.
India isn’t the first country where Facebook has been facing political backlash, in fact even in countries such as Sri Lanka, Philippines and United States, it has been under the scanner for propagating controversial and disruptive political posts and advertisements.
In its defence a spokesperson for Facebook said, “”We prohibit hate speech and content that incites violence and we enforce these policies globally without regard to anyone’s political position or party affiliation. While we know there is more to do, we’re making progress on enforcement and conduct regular audits of our process to ensure fairness and accuracy.”
