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Parliamentary panel to summon Meta over Mark Zuckerberg's remark on India polls: BJP MP
In a podcast, Mark Zuckerberg’s had claimed that the incumbent government in India lost the election in 2024 due to its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Nishikant Dubey, who heads the parliamentary committee on communications and information technology, on Tuesday said that his team would summon Meta over its CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s statement that the incumbent government in India lost the election in 2024 due to its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“My committee will summon Meta for this misinformation. Incorrect information tarnishes the image of any democratic country,” Dubey wrote on X.
“The organization will have to apologise to the Indian Parliament and the people of this country for this mistake,” he added.
In a podcast, part of a series of media appearances that Zuckerberg has made after announcing the end of the third-party fact-checking system for the US and a slew of controversial changes to his platforms’ content policies, Zuckerberg said that after Covid, people lost trust in information given by the governments because of which incumbent governments that went to polls in 2024 lost.
“It’s not just the US. I think a lot of the people in the US focus on this as a kind of an American phenomenon but I kind of think that the reaction to Covid probably caused a breakdown in trust in a lot of government around the world. I mean 2024 was a big election year around the world and all these countries, India, just like a ton of countries that had elections and the incumbents basically lost every single one. There is some sort of a global phenomenon where the whether it was because of inflation, because of the economic policies to deal with Covid or just how the governments dealt with Covid, it seems to have had this effect that is global, not just the US, but like a very broad decrease in trust, at least in that set of incumbents and maybe in sort of these democratic institutions overall,” Zuckerberg had said.
Union minister fact-checks Mark Zuckerberg
On Monday, Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw called out Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg over the “erroneous assertion” regarding the government, saying it was disappointing to see the billionaire spreading misinformation.
"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.
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