With the upcoming Lok Sabha elections in 2024 in mind, the bloc also made an ‘earnest and urgent plea’ to the companies to consider these facts ‘seriously and ensure’ immediately that their operations in India ‘remain neutral.’
I.N.D.I.A parties have shot off letters to Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Sundar Pichai protesting against BJP’s “vile, communally divisive propaganda” on Facebook, WhatsApp and YouTube and warned that they “will not take lightly” the “blatant partisanship and bias” towards one political dispensation that “tantamounts” to interfering in India’s democracy by private foreign companies.
In separate letters, the parties highlighted recent reports in The Washington Post on Meta companies WhatsApp and Facebook “aiding the communal hatred campaign of the ruling BJP” and Google’s YouTube “propagating communal hatred and dividing Indian society.”
INDIA parties write to Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg following Washington Post report on Meta’s culpability in abetting social disharmony and inciting communal hatred in India @DeccanHerald https://t.co/diS5vd6g2f
— Shemin (@shemin_joy) October 12, 2023
The letter to Pichai said it was “very clear from the exhaustive investigation” by the newspaper that Alphabet, the parent company of Google, and specifically YouTube is “culpable of abetting social disharmony and inciting communal hatred in India”.
“Further we have data that shows algorithmic moderation and suppression of Opposition leaders’ content on your platform while also promoting ruling party content,” it said. Similar charges were made against Facebook and WhatsApp in the letter to Zuckerberg.