Facebook officials, on Wednesday, had appeared before a parliamentary panel led by Congress MP Shashi Tharoor and faced questions on the alleged political bias from both sides of the divide.
The BJP leader at the core of allegations that the social media giant did not apply hate speech rules on members of the ruling BJP, T Raja Singh, has now been banned by Facebook on its platform. The spokesperson said the politician was banned for violating Facebook’s policy on content promoting hate and violence.
“We have banned Raja Singh from Facebook for violating our policy prohibiting those that promote or engage in violence and hate from having a presence on our platform,” a Facebook spokesperson said in an emailed statement. The process for evaluating potential violators “is extensive and it is what led us to Facebook’s decision to remove his account”, the spokesperson added.
The action by the social media giant comes after it was facing much flak for it’s alleged inaction against posts made by BJP politicians that were incendiary and against the policies of the platform.
Facebook officials, on Wednesday, had appeared before a parliamentary panel led by Congress MP Shashi Tharoor and faced questions on the alleged political bias from both sides of the divide.
T Raja Singh, in a Twitter video last month, had said that he does not have an official Facebook page. “I have got to know many FB pages are using my name. Let me clarify I’m not having any official page, I’m not responsible for any of their posts,” the politician had said.
Claiming that his Facebook account was “hacked and blocked in 2018, he had also disowned communally-loaded posts.
On August 16, in a video on Twitter, he said he was being “projected in such a way that I am the most dangerous in the entire world (like) when he (Raja Singh) says something on social media, then something or the other happens.” He said he had one official YouTube account and one official Twitter account.
Wall Street Journal, in it’s earlier report on the social media giant , had said that an insider revealed how Ankhi Das, one of the top officials at Facebook India, intervened in an internal communication to stop a permanent ban on Raja Singh after he allegedly posted divisive content, saying it would damage “business prospects” in India.
Raja Singh, however, denied putting up inflammatory posts, challenging anyone to prove he could be blamed for social strife.
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