Social media is being misused to shape political narratives, Congress President Sonia Gandhi said in the Lok Sabha.
"Young minds are being filled with hate. I urge the government to put an end to interference by Facebook and other social media giants," the Congress supremo said.
Gandhi called attention to the growing phenomenon of social media giants influencing the public discourse and exercising undue influence on the outcomes of elections in democratic countries, including India.
"Thank you for allowing me to take up issue of paramount importance - the rising danger of social media being abused to hack our democracy. Global companies like Facebook and Twitter are used increasingly to shape political narratives by leaders, parties and their proxies," she said.
Gandhi added that, "It has repeatedly come to public notice that global social media companies aren't providing a level playing field to all parties... the blatant manner in which social harmony is being disturbed by Facebook, with the connivance of the ruling establishment, is dangerous for our democracy."
"We need to protect democracy and social harmony regardless of who is in power," she concluded.
An investigative report released by Al Jazeera has claimed that Facebook carried advertisements promoting the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) during the 2019 Lok Sabha polls with the aim of increasing the ruling party’s visibility on social media platforms, bypassing the law.
These advertisements, which were in a video format, were featured on Facebook’s ad library. The advertisers “either hid their identities or their connections with the BJP”, according to the piece, which is based on the findings of non-profit media organisation The Reporters’ Collective and ad.watch, a research project studying political advertisements on social media.
The report, written by journalists Kumar Sambhav, Shreegireesh Jalihal and Nayantara Ranganathan, fleshed out details of how Facebook carried “surrogate advertisements” that were allegedly in favour of the BJP, or discredited opposition parties.
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