"Facebook was and continues to be having damningly acute awareness about content against a particular section of Indian society and has consciously chosen not to act against it," Pawan Khera, spokesperson for the Indian National Congress, said yesterday while announcing the party's demand of a probe into Facebook by a joint parliamentary committee. The demand comes after reports revealed earlier this week that the company was aware of misinformation and inflammatory posts in India but failed to take action. Notably, the reports revealed, Facebook failed to take down pages linked to the Bajrang Dal and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) which posted inflammatory anti-Muslim content on Facebook-owned platforms. Facebook's reluctance to apply its content moderation standards to the Indian right wing first gained limelight last year. Leaked company documents, dubbed the Facebook Papers, have led key stakeholders in India to pay attention once again. What issues did the Congress raise? In the press conference, the Congress party accused Facebook of acting as an "ally" of the ruling BJP government. Here are the key points raised by Khera in the press conference: Biggest market: "India is Facebook's biggest market with 300 million users... What right does Facebook have to push a particular ideology on innocent users through fake images and posts? An environment is being created which benefits the ruling party," Khera said. Content moderation failures: "Facebook was given advice that the ruling party could get annoyed if RSS was declared as dangerous. Facebook knew that it [RSS] is a dangerous organization, but…
