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<p>Facebook</p><p>A political slugfest has erupted between the BJP government and Opposition parties over an article in the Wall Street Journal that alleged that the social media giant was favouring the ruling party. According to the WSJ story, some Facebook employees had flagged certain posts in March by T. Raja Singh, BJP MP from Telangana, as dangerous violations of the company&rsquo;s hate-speech rules. But Ankhi Das, the firm&rsquo;s public policy director for India, south and central Asia, opposed applying the &ldquo;hate speech rules to Singh&rdquo; and &ldquo;three other Hindu nationalist individuals and groupsflagged internally for promoting or participating in violence&rdquo;. Das, the article said, told employees that punishing violations by BJP politicians would damage the company&rsquo;s business prospects in India. Andy Stone, a Facebook spokesperson, admitted that Das had raised concerns about the political fallout, but added that her opposition wasn&rsquo;t the sole factor that determined the company&rsquo;s decision to not take any action.</p><p>The WSJ article has triggered a massive debate, with the Congress demanding a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) probe into the allegations of misconduct by Facebook. &ldquo;The BJP and RSS control Facebook and WhatsApp in India,&rdquo; says Congress leader Rahul Gandhi. &ldquo;They spread fake news and hatred through it and use it to influence the electorate. We cannot allow any manipulation of our hard-earned democracy through bias, fake news and hate speech. Facebook&rsquo;s involvementneeds to be questioned by all Indians.&rdquo; Shashi Tharoor, chairman of the parliamentary standing committee on information technology (IT), has said that the committee would like to hear an explanation from Facebook. Congress spokesperson Supriya Shrinate has even hinted at Das&rsquo;s direct connection to the BJP as a factor influencing Facebook&rsquo;s tilt towards the saffron party. &ldquo;Her identical twin sister Rashmi Das was not just a general secretary of the RSS-affiliated ABVP (Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad) students&rsquo; union at JNU, she continues to be an ABVP activist,&rdquo; Shrinate said. Rashmi is also a former chairperson of the World Organisation of Students and Youth (WOSY), a non-profit affiliated with ABVP.</p><p>The BJP wasted no time in returning fire. Union parliamentary affairs minister Pralhad Joshi ruled out a JPC probe, while BJP MP and member of the standing committee on IT Nishikant Dubey questioned the legality of Tharoor&rsquo;s plan to summon Facebook. Union IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad mocked the Congress for having the &ldquo;gall to question the BJP&rdquo;, saying that it was &ldquo;caught red-handed in alliance with Cambridge Analytica and Facebook to weaponise data before elections&rdquo;. In 2018, Christopher Wylie, a former employee of British data analytics and political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, which allegedly stole the data of 50 million Facebook users in 2014, claimed that the Congress was the firm&rsquo;s client in India.</p><div class="itemcenter"><amp-iframe height="62" title="" width="320" sandbox="allow-forms allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-top-navigation allow-top-navigation-by-user-activation" allowfullscreen src="https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.dev?url=https%3A%2F%2Fakm-img-a-in.tosshub.com%2Fsites%2Findiatoday%2Fbanner%2Fpreferred-source-new.html%3Fv%3D1.014%5Cu0026native%3D1" class="mrBt15 preferred-source-banner"> </amp-iframe></div></p><p>When contacted, Facebook said: &ldquo;We prohibit hate speech and content that incites violence and we enforce these policies globally without regard to anyone&rsquo;s political position or party affiliation. While we know there is more to do, we&rsquo;re making progress on enforcement and conduct regular audits of our process to ensure fairness and accuracy.&rdquo; They had released this statement publicly on August 17, but have otherwise maintained a studied silence. There has been no independent audit on the platform&rsquo;s actions against incendiary content.</p><p>This is not the first time Facebook has faced allegations of misconduct. It has often aligned itself with the ruling dispensation across the globe. For instance, in Singapore, it agreed to append a &ldquo;correction notice&rdquo; to news stories deemed false by the government. Earlier this month, in the US, Facebook&rsquo;s vice-president of global public policy, Joel Kaplan was reported to have intervened to &ldquo;remove strikes&rdquo; against conservative pages in the US. The social media platform has been accused in Brazil of similar interference. Last year, TMC MP Derek O&rsquo;Brien had claimed in Parliament that Facebook&rsquo;s algorithm was censoring anti-BJP news and said that &ldquo;Facebook&rsquo;s Delhi office is virtually an extended BJP IT cell&rdquo;.</p><p>The decision by the Election Commission of India (ECI) to tie up with Facebook India for a voter awareness campaign in 2017 has also come under scrutiny. A year later, on March 23, the ECI announced that they were reviewing its deal with Facebook due to concerns of data breach, which could affect free and fair elections. However, four days later, the partnership was back on. No explanation was offered.</p><p>Facebook&rsquo;s alignment with the ruling political forces, however, seems driven more by commercial considerations than ideological ones. The growing spend by political parties on social media ads is making these bonds more transactional. For instance, in the 2019-20 election cycle in the US, Facebook cornered 59.4 per cent of the total digital political ad revenues, says market research company eMarketer. Now, India has emerged as the go-to destination for political ad revenue.</p><p>With more than 340 million registered users and 400 million using its chat service WhatsApp, India is Facebook&rsquo;s biggest market. Plus, the digital landscape of India is only getting bigger, the internet population of the country grew 108 per cent, from 250 million in 2014, when the BJP came to power, to 520 million in 2019. Social media usage grew by 155 per cent during this period. Facebook, in April, announced that it was spending $5.7 billion (around Rs 43,000 crore), its biggest foreign investment yet, to buy a less than 10 per cent stake in Indian telecommunications company Reliance Jio, which has 388 million subscribers.</p><p>A &ldquo;working relationship&rdquo; with the cash-rich BJP has ensured a steady flow of ad revenue for Facebook to further its growth plan. According to Facebook&rsquo;s Ad Library Report, over 40 per cent of the Rs 10 crore spent on political ads in February and March, prior to the 2019 general election, came from the BJP.</p><p>While the BJP has emerged as its top client, the patronage is not quite explicit yet. For instance, in 2016, Facebook&rsquo;s proposal to launch &lsquo;Free Basics&rsquo; to provide a free, Facebook-centric internet service was ultimately rejected by the government, albeit after a big hue and cry from net-neutrality activists. The company&rsquo;s plan to launch WhatsApp digital payment service, too, has been pending for over two years.</p><div id="tab-link-wrapper-plugin"><div class="authors__container"><div class="authors__by"><div class="authlable">Published By: </div><div class="authdetaisl">Iram Ara Ibrahim</div></div><div class="published__on"><div class="authlable">Published On: </div><div class="authdetaisl">Aug 22, 2020</div></div></div><div class="sendros">--- ENDS ---</div></div>

up-front

UP Front

<p>Facebook</p><p>A political slugfest has erupted between the BJP government and Opposition parties over an article in the Wall Street Journal that alleged that the social media giant was favouring the ruling party. According to the WSJ story, some Facebook employees had flagged certain posts in March by T. Raja Singh, BJP MP from Telangana, as dangerous violations of the company&rsquo;s hate-speech rules. But Ankhi Das, the firm&rsquo;s public policy director for India, south and central Asia, opposed applying the &ldquo;hate speech rules to Singh&rdquo; and &ldquo;three other Hindu nationalist individuals and groupsflagged internally for promoting or participating in violence&rdquo;. Das, the article said, told employees that punishing violations by BJP politicians would damage the company&rsquo;s business prospects in India. Andy Stone, a Facebook spokesperson, admitted that Das had raised concerns about the political fallout, but added that her opposition wasn&rsquo;t the sole factor that determined the company&rsquo;s decision to not take any action.</p><p>The WSJ article has triggered a massive debate, with the Congress demanding a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) probe into the allegations of misconduct by Facebook. &ldquo;The BJP and RSS control Facebook and WhatsApp in India,&rdquo; says Congress leader Rahul Gandhi. &ldquo;They spread fake news and hatred through it and use it to influence the electorate. We cannot allow any manipulation of our hard-earned democracy through bias, fake news and hate speech. Facebook&rsquo;s involvementneeds to be questioned by all Indians.&rdquo; Shashi Tharoor, chairman of the parliamentary standing committee on information technology (IT), has said that the committee would like to hear an explanation from Facebook. Congress spokesperson Supriya Shrinate has even hinted at Das&rsquo;s direct connection to the BJP as a factor influencing Facebook&rsquo;s tilt towards the saffron party. &ldquo;Her identical twin sister Rashmi Das was not just a general secretary of the RSS-affiliated ABVP (Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad) students&rsquo; union at JNU, she continues to be an ABVP activist,&rdquo; Shrinate said. Rashmi is also a former chairperson of the World Organisation of Students and Youth (WOSY), a non-profit affiliated with ABVP.</p><p>The BJP wasted no time in returning fire. Union parliamentary affairs minister Pralhad Joshi ruled out a JPC probe, while BJP MP and member of the standing committee on IT Nishikant Dubey questioned the legality of Tharoor&rsquo;s plan to summon Facebook. Union IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad mocked the Congress for having the &ldquo;gall to question the BJP&rdquo;, saying that it was &ldquo;caught red-handed in alliance with Cambridge Analytica and Facebook to weaponise data before elections&rdquo;. In 2018, Christopher Wylie, a former employee of British data analytics and political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, which allegedly stole the data of 50 million Facebook users in 2014, claimed that the Congress was the firm&rsquo;s client in India.</p><div class="itemcenter"><iframe scrolling="no" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" width="100%" height="62" awidth="320" aheight="62" amplayout="fixed" src="https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.dev?url=https%3A%2F%2Fakm-img-a-in.tosshub.com%2Fsites%2Findiatoday%2Fbanner%2Fpreferred-source-new.html%3Fv%3D1.014" class="preferred-source-banner" loading="lazy"></iframe></div><style>.preferred-source-banner{  margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom:10px;}</style></p><p>When contacted, Facebook said: &ldquo;We prohibit hate speech and content that incites violence and we enforce these policies globally without regard to anyone&rsquo;s political position or party affiliation. While we know there is more to do, we&rsquo;re making progress on enforcement and conduct regular audits of our process to ensure fairness and accuracy.&rdquo; They had released this statement publicly on August 17, but have otherwise maintained a studied silence. There has been no independent audit on the platform&rsquo;s actions against incendiary content.</p><p>This is not the first time Facebook has faced allegations of misconduct. It has often aligned itself with the ruling dispensation across the globe. For instance, in Singapore, it agreed to append a &ldquo;correction notice&rdquo; to news stories deemed false by the government. Earlier this month, in the US, Facebook&rsquo;s vice-president of global public policy, Joel Kaplan was reported to have intervened to &ldquo;remove strikes&rdquo; against conservative pages in the US. The social media platform has been accused in Brazil of similar interference. Last year, TMC MP Derek O&rsquo;Brien had claimed in Parliament that Facebook&rsquo;s algorithm was censoring anti-BJP news and said that &ldquo;Facebook&rsquo;s Delhi office is virtually an extended BJP IT cell&rdquo;.</p><p>The decision by the Election Commission of India (ECI) to tie up with Facebook India for a voter awareness campaign in 2017 has also come under scrutiny. A year later, on March 23, the ECI announced that they were reviewing its deal with Facebook due to concerns of data breach, which could affect free and fair elections. However, four days later, the partnership was back on. No explanation was offered.</p><p>Facebook&rsquo;s alignment with the ruling political forces, however, seems driven more by commercial considerations than ideological ones. The growing spend by political parties on social media ads is making these bonds more transactional. For instance, in the 2019-20 election cycle in the US, Facebook cornered 59.4 per cent of the total digital political ad revenues, says market research company eMarketer. Now, India has emerged as the go-to destination for political ad revenue.</p><p>With more than 340 million registered users and 400 million using its chat service WhatsApp, India is Facebook&rsquo;s biggest market. Plus, the digital landscape of India is only getting bigger, the internet population of the country grew 108 per cent, from 250 million in 2014, when the BJP came to power, to 520 million in 2019. Social media usage grew by 155 per cent during this period. Facebook, in April, announced that it was spending $5.7 billion (around Rs 43,000 crore), its biggest foreign investment yet, to buy a less than 10 per cent stake in Indian telecommunications company Reliance Jio, which has 388 million subscribers.</p><p>A &ldquo;working relationship&rdquo; with the cash-rich BJP has ensured a steady flow of ad revenue for Facebook to further its growth plan. According to Facebook&rsquo;s Ad Library Report, over 40 per cent of the Rs 10 crore spent on political ads in February and March, prior to the 2019 general election, came from the BJP.</p><p>While the BJP has emerged as its top client, the patronage is not quite explicit yet. For instance, in 2016, Facebook&rsquo;s proposal to launch &lsquo;Free Basics&rsquo; to provide a free, Facebook-centric internet service was ultimately rejected by the government, albeit after a big hue and cry from net-neutrality activists. The company&rsquo;s plan to launch WhatsApp digital payment service, too, has been pending for over two years.</p><div id="tab-link-wrapper-plugin"><div class="authors__container"><div class="authors__by"><div class="authlable">Published By: </div><div class="authdetaisl">Iram Ara Ibrahim</div></div><div class="published__on"><div class="authlable">Published On: </div><div class="authdetaisl">Aug 22, 2020</div></div></div><div class="sendros">--- ENDS ---</div></div>

A 'working relationship' with the cash-rich BJP has ensured a steady flow of ad revenue
for Facebook.

India Today

A ‘working relationship’ with the cash-rich BJP has ensured a steady flow of ad revenue
for Facebook.

Friending the powers that be

Actor Ranvir Shorey opened up on long work hours, health, and the quality of work on sets. He also shared his thoughts on AR Rahman’s industry remarks, upcoming projects like Khosla Ka Ghosla 2 and Season 2 of Bindiya Ke Bahubali.

Ranvir Shorey

Exclusive: Ranvir Shorey reacts to call for 8-hour workday, A R Rahman's bias claim

Abhishek Sharma's explosive batting, spin bowling, and aggression against pacers give India a solid option for the ODI World Cup in South Africa 

IND vs NZ: Abhishek Sharma scored the 2nd fastest T20I fifty by an Indian in Guwahati (PTI Photo)

Abhishek Sharma is ready for ODIs, time to unleash the Hitman heir

Filmmaker Karan Johar backed Ranveer Singh’s Dhurandhar and Sunny Deol’s Border 2 on Sunday. He said the mega success of the two recent back-to-back Hindi films proves Bollywood is back. 

Karan Johar

Bollywood is back: Karan Johar cheers for Border 2, Dhurandhar

Thousands of travellers evacuated Miami International Airport after a suspicious unattended bag was found. The Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office later gave the all clear, with TSA checkpoints for concourses G, H and J, along with surrounding areas, reopening after the security sweep was completed.

Travellers wait to board a plane. (File Photo: Reuters)

Airport

Suspicious luggage forces Miami airport evacuation; checkpoints later reopen

The anticipated tariff cuts would substantially ease access to the Indian market for Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz and BMW. 

Mercedes

India plans to cut EU car tariffs to 40% from 110% ahead of trade deal: Report

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Republic Day

Padma Awards 2026

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Border 2

Bangladesh

T20 World Cup

Tariffs

Iran

PM Modi

Jana Nayagan

WPL 2026

Budget 2026

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s election rally in poll-bound Kerala on Thursday saw a warm and light-hearted moment when he paused his speech to acknowledge a young child in the crowd holding up his picture, drawing loud applause. Modi asked the boy to hand over the photograph, write his home address on the back, and promised to write to him personally, directing SPG personnel to handle the picture carefully as a token of the child’s affection. 

PM Modi's Kerala  rally.

You’ll get tired beta: PM’s warm moment with child holding his pic at Kerala rally

 Amidst inclement weather and heavy snowfall, a team of Udhampur police rescued 12 individuals, including women and children, who were stranded at Chochru Galla in the upper ridges of the Basantgarh area.

Udhampur Police Rescue 12 People Stranded In Heavy Snow

Udhampur police rescue 12 people stranded in heavy snowfall in J&K's Basantgarh

Ajith Kumar's fans took the celebrations too seriously as they burst crackers inside a theatre hall during Mankatha screening. The film re-released in South India on January 23.

Ajith Mankatha celebrations

Watch: Ajith's fans burst crackers for Mankantha intro scene inside auditorium

In an exclusive interview with India Today TV Consulting Editor Rajdeep Sardesai at Davos, Somalia's Deputy Prime Minister Salah Ahmed Jama spoke in fluent Hindi and slammed Donald Trump for his remarks and recalled his student days in India. 

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Friending the powers that be

A 'working relationship' with the cash-rich BJP has ensured a steady flow of ad revenue for Facebook.

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