Facebook row
Discussions will resume again: Shashi Tharoor after meeting Facebook India chief
New Delhi/IBNS: Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, who heads the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology, on Wednesday informed that the Facebook representatives will appear again to resume the discussion on the row over the social media giant's content policy.
This comes after a meeting of Tharoor with Facebook's representatives for over three and a half hours on Thursday.
At the meeting, Facebook India chief Ajit Mohan faced questions that included its hiring process and transparency, said reports
Indicating that the meeting remained inconclusive, Tharoor tweeted: "In response to overwhelming media interest in the meeting of the ParliamentaryStandingCommittee on InformationTechnology that just adjourned, this is all I can say: we met for some three&a half hours & unanimously agreed to resume the discussion later, incl w/ reps of @Facebook."
In response to overwhelming media interest in the meeting of the ParliamentaryStandingCommittee on InformationTechnology that just adjourned, this is all I can say: we met for some three&a half hours & unanimously agreed to resume the discussion later, incl w/ reps of @Facebook.
— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) September 2, 2020
The representatives of Facebook India were summoned after a controversy over Facebook contents' approach which was allegedly bias towards the members of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
US publication Wall Street Journal had reported that Facebook had ignored the hate-speech posts, favouring the BJP.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook's senior executive Ankhi Das took the call of "deliberately ignoring" hate speech by BJP leaders.
The Journal reported that she had said that punishing violations by BJP workers "would damage the company's business prospects in the country."
The Journal's article alleged that Facebook has a "broader pattern of favouritism" towards the BJP.
However, on Tuesday, Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad in a letter to the social media giant's founder Mark Zuckerberg alleged that employees of Facebook "are on record abusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi and senior cabinet ministers" while still working in India and managing important positions.
There have been "multiple instances recently where Facebook has been used by anarchic and radical elements whose sole aim is to destroy social order, recruit people and assemble them for violence. However, we are yet to see any meaningful action against such elements," Prasad had said.
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