Union Minister RS Prasad writes mail to Mark Zuckerberg: Problematic When Facebook Employees on Record Abuse PM

New Delhi : Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said there are multiple instances where Facebook has been used by radical elements “whose sole aim is to destroy social order”.

Facebook had been in news being biased behaviour towards the ruling BJP. In context to this Union IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has written to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg raising concerns over senior Facebook officials “on record abusing Prime Minister and senior cabinet ministers”.

Further he added it is problematic when these employees are doing this while currently working in Facebook India and managing important positions. Prasad making exactly opposite claims has raised another questions towards the facebook operations.

He wrote an email to facebook in which he said, “a concerted effort by Facebook in the run up the 2019 general elections to delete pages or substantially reduce their reach but also offer no recourse or right of appeal to affected people who are supportive of the right of centre ideology”. However, there were attempts through “selective leaks” to portray a different reality, he wrote.

He said there are “credible media reports” about the Facebook India’s managing director and other senior officials belonging to a particular belief and that people from this political disposition has been “overwhelmingly defeated in successive free and fair elections”.

Another issue raised by Prasad is the outsourcing of fact-checking services to third parties, which he called “shady organisations with no credibility”. He said that “vigilant volunteers” have to regularly fact check these groups, adding that a lot of “misinformation” about COVID-19 and its aftermath have gone unchecked. He said an organisation like Facebook with transnational presence and wide user base cannot be immune to local sensitivities.

He said only an “internal power struggle” could “explain how facts are being spun by selective leaks from within your company to try and portray an alternate reality”. He ended his letter with an appeal that Facebook puts in place country-specific community guidelines that respect the social and religious diversity of India.