Facebook in the dock again its different strokes for different folks impair democracy
By forcing people to stay home as much as possible the Covid crisis has likely contributed to an increase in the influence of social media. And as much as these platforms have played questionable roles in elections past, now that the social distancing imperative has forced most election campaigning online the stakes are even higher.It is against this backdrop that a political storm has been raised by a WSJ news report saying on Independence Day that Facebook flouted its own policies on hate speech and allowed communally sensitive content shared by BJP’s Telangana MLA T Raja Singh to remain online because not doing so would hurt Facebook’s business interests.
Like with so many key issues, on this one too the political debate is unfortunately along nakedly partisan lines. Whataboutery is rife. Government and opposition should instead unite in national interest to ensure that platforms like Facebook maintain political neutrality as also accountability for what they publish. The algorithms that control newsfeeds need to become transparent too. Finally, applying different standards of hate speech for different contributors makes a mockery of free speech and diminishes democracy.
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