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Ashwini Vaishnaw fact-checks Mark Zuckerberg over India polls remark: 'Misinformation'
Lauding the Modi government's efforts during the pandemic, he asked the tech billionaire to uphold facts and credibility.
Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Monday called out Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg's erroneous assertion that India's incumbent party lost all major elections, saying it was disappointing to see the billionaire dishing out misinformation.
The Bharatiya Janata Party won the 2024 general election. Its leader, Narendra Modi, became the prime minister for the third consecutive time. The Meta CEO, however, told podcaster Joe Rogan that incumbents in all the countries, including India, lost elections.
"2024 was a big election year around the world. All these countries, like India, had elections. The incumbents basically lost every single one. There is some sort of a global phenomenon – whether it was because of inflation or the economic policies to deal with Covid or just how the governments dealt with Covid - seems to have had this global effect...There was a broad decrease in trust in incumbents and maybe in these sorts of democratic institutions overall," Zuckerberg told Rogan in a recent podcast.
Reacting to the remark, the union minister clarified that the people of India reaffirmed their trust in the Modi-led NDA.
"As the world’s largest democracy, India conducted the 2024 elections with over 640 million voters. The people of India reaffirmed their trust in the NDA led by PM Narendra Modi's leadership. Mr. Zuckerberg’s claim that most incumbent governments, including India in the 2024 elections, lost post-COVID is factually incorrect," he said.
Lauding the Modi government's efforts during the pandemic, he asked the tech billionaire to uphold facts and credibility.
"From free food for 800 million, 2.2 billion free vaccines, and aid to nations worldwide during COVID, to leading India as the fastest-growing major economy, PM Modi’s decisive 3rd-term victory is a testament to good governance and public trust. @Meta, it’s disappointing to see misinformation from Mr. Zuckerberg himself. Let’s uphold facts and credibility," he wrote on X.
Meta closes fact-check unit
Mark Zuckerberg triggered alarm Tuesday when he announced the Palo Alto company was ditching third-party fact-checking in the United States and turning over the task of debunking falsehoods to ordinary users under a model known as "Community Notes," popularized by X.
US president Joe Biden called the move shameful.
