BJP alleges Cong-Facebook nexus, new report says Das took credit for ‘Modi’s campaign’

Facebook has been courting controversy since earlier this month when reports emerged that Das had allegedly let communal posts by members of the ruling BJP slide, even though they were in violation of its hate-speech policy

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Congress got into a fresh war of words and accused each other of alleged nexus with Facebook hours after a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) report on Sunday cited messages of the social media company’s India public policy head, Ankhi Das, in which she claimed to have “lit a fire to his [Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s] social media campaign” before he swept to power in 2014.

Facebook had said that the reports were taken out of context.(REUTERS)

Another WSJ report earlier this month said Das opposed applying hate-speech rules to a BJP politician whose posts targeted Muslims. The report prompted Congress lawmaker Shashi Tharoor-led Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information and Technology (IT) to summon Facebook’s representatives for an explanation.

The Congress again attacked the BJP over its alleged nexus with Facebook and for undermining the country’s democratic ethos after WSJ’s Sunday report. “Facebook was subverting India’s Democracy & Electoral Process. Shocking & gory details revealed by @wsj_com. If this is not ‘Criminality’, what is? Nothing short of a ‘full independent investigation’ will unravel all the layers of BJP-Facebook nexus,” Congress’s chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala tweeted on Monday.

BJP’s national Information and technology in charge, Amit Malviya, earlier tweeted: “Meet Vijaya Moorthy. Supposedly, heads government outreach at Facebook. Worked with Rahul Gandhi’s team for nearly a decade (love for his former boss still going strong)... Talk about Congress-Facebook nexus? Well, it seems Congress is running Facebook!” he tweeted.

Malviya questioned how come the “mandarins at WSJ keep missing Ankhi Das’ posts sympathetic” to the Aam Aadmi Party or the Trinamool Congress. He added the paper keeps harping on her perceived bias for the BJP. “Is it because they want people who are uncompromisingly Left.”

Facebook referred to Das’s messages cited in the fresh report and insisted they have been taken out of context and do not represent the full scope of the company’s efforts to support the use of the platform by parties across the Indian political spectrum in 2014. “Facebook’s public policy team operates with integrity and any suggestion that their efforts are motivated by partisanship discounts their hard work every day,” it said in response to HT’s request for comments on the WSJ report.

According to the fresh report, Das praised Modi as the “strongman” who had broken the Congress’ socialist hold on the state. The posts were made in a Facebook group designed for employees in India but was open to a global audience.

The report also mentioned a photograph of Das with her “longest fellow traveller”, top global elections official Katie Harbath, and Modi. Das, according to the report, arrived at Facebook in 2011, at a time “when the social media giant was eager to demonstrate its utility in politics”. “It rolled out training for several Indian political parties on how best to use the platform to mobilize supporters. One was Mr. Modi’s 2012 campaign for re-election as chief minister of the western Indian state of Gujarat,” the report said. It added Das in 2012 wrote about Modi’s victory of the “success of our Gujarat campaign”, which was close to reaching a million fans on Facebook.

“Mr. Modi soon launched his campaign for national office, with Facebook again offering training and assistance… Ms. Das made her sentiments on the race clear. When a fellow staffer noted in response to one of her internal posts that the BJP’s primary opponent, the Indian National Congress, had a larger following on Facebook than Mr. Modi’s individual page, Ms. Das responded: ‘Don’t diminish him by comparing him with INC. Ah well—let my bias not show’,” the report said.

The report alleged the company has acted in a biased manner when taking down fake pages and accounts during India’s 2019 national elections. “In another incident, which hasn’t been previously reported, Facebook declined to act after discovering that the BJP was circumventing its political ad transparency requirements...”

It added Facebook neither took down the pages nor flagged the ads. “Instead, it privately raised the matter with the BJP...”