Social media platforms like Facebook
and WhatsApp have well laid out policies on posting their contents just as
print and electronic media are bound by rules and regulations. The Facebook had
a few years back published internal editorial guidelines to rebut accusations
that it was politically biased in showing news content on its pages. Shockingly,
such policies are honoured more in breach than in observance. Social media is
several notches ahead in violating own policies for promoting self-interest. The
latest statistics show that WhatsApp has around 200 crore and Facebook has 130
crore users across the globe. This figure is tentatively put at 40 crores and 24
crores respectively in India. In this background of proliferation of social media
users, the articles published recently in international media, especially
Wall
Street Journal, pinpointing how Facebook is showing favouritism towards the
ruling party in India, assume great significance; any biased presentation of
news content can have disastrous results.
Reports point out that Facebook is
reluctant to take down posts by right-wing leaders while they do so with regard
to posts by those who oppose the present regime and its core supporters. To
substantiate this charge, the
Wall Street Journal referred to BJP’s Telangana
MLA T. Raja Singh whose posts have not been removed from Facebook despite its
controversial content denigrating Muslims. Despite BJP coming out all guns
blazing against the report, the newspaper has been vindicated, though quite
late, as the Facebook has now banned the MLA from its platform for violating
its policy on content promoting violence and hate. Earlier, the Facebook complicated
the issue by the reported statement of its Public Policy Director in India who had
told her colleagues that “punishing violations by politicians from Mr Modi’s
party would affect the company’s business prospects in the country.†If proved
true, such partisan approach in monitoring the content on social media
platforms is outrageous to say the least.
The media exposures on Facebook have shown
that some of its news content could affect the religious and social harmony in
the country. The Congress has termed it ‘brazen assault’ on democracy and peaceful
co-existence of people. In a related development, the Delhi Assembly’s Peace and
Harmony Committee has decided to summon Facebook officials on hate content in
its posts. The committee has received several complaints against the officials
of Facebook for their allegedly deliberate inaction to contain hateful content.
It seems to be an afterthought that the Modi government too is trying to turn
the tables on Facebook. In a letter to Mark Zuckerberg, Union Minister Ravi
Shankar Prasad stated that the social media platform is against those who have
right-of-centre ideology.
Any unholy nexus between the
government of the largest democracy and the biggest social media platform can
lead to dangerous situations. It can swing public opinion in favour of the “one
who pays the piperâ€. Social media platforms should not be weighed down by
business interests; rather they have a social commitment to not harm the
harmony prevailing in a country. Hence a thorough investigation is needed to
find out whether such platforms are being misused for posting biased news content.
They cannot be allowed to go scot-free if they allow certain preferred
‘clients’ to indulge in hate-mongering, thereby putting the nation’s future in
peril.
