Congress MP K.C. Venugopal called out Facebook's "blatant bias and dubious in content regulation" citing recent media reports. "This is damning and serious allegation of Facebook's interference in India's electoral democracy", adding that "India is one [Facebook's] biggest markets", Venugopal said in Rajya Sabha on Thursday morning. "Raising a matter of public importance, of Facebook India's interference in India's electoral politics," Venugopal said. It seems that the motion Venugopal wanted to pass was "I want to lay on the table of the house for demand for probe into Facebook's interference in India's electoral democracy", which Rajya Sabha chairperson Venkaiah Naidu read out. Following this, Congress MP Amee Yajnik said, "Social media platforms are flooded with harmful content, and a comprehensive legal framework is required to monitor these platforms". In the last few weeks, Facebook hasfaced harsh backlash after the Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook's top policy executives in India shielded hate speech by politicians of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to protect the company's business prospects in India. Facebook later permanently suspended the account of T. Raja Singh, one of the politicians it had earlier not taken action against, and five accounts dedicated to him. When the bias allegations first surfaced, Rahul Gandhi had said that BJP and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) controlled Facebook and its subsidiary WhatsApp in India. Congress's head of data analytics Praveen Chakravarthy had said that Facebook was clearly interfering in Indian elections and asked the Facebook headquarters to conduct an investigation into…
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