Facebook let Reliance-backed firm post surrogate ads favouring BJP In the run-up to the 2019 Parliamentary Elections, Facebook allowed a subsidiary of Jio Platforms called NEWJ to disguise surrogate ads as "news content" in an effort to boost the BJP's social media campaigns, according to an investigative report published on Al Jazeera. Jio Platforms Ltd, India’s largest telecom and internet conglomerate is owned by billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Group. This finding was revealed due to combined efforts from The Reporters’ Collective (TRC), a non-profit media organisation based in India, and ad. watch, a research project studying political ads on social media. The two organisations studied 5,36,070 political ads placed on Facebook and Instagram from February 2019 through November 2020, to determine the influence of Facebook’s political advertising policies on elections in India. The analysis showed that over the course of 22 months, Facebook's advertising platform "systematically undercut the political competition in the world’s largest electoral democracy, giving an unfair advantage to the BJP over its competitors." Despite it being banned under Indian law, NEWJ published surrogate ads favouring the BJP on Facebook by exploiting the loophole that the ECI did not "extend this ban to digital platforms like FB." Navi Technologies files draft papers for ₹3,350 cr IPO Navi Technologies, helmed by Sachin Bansal, has filed preliminary paperwork with SEBI to raise Rs 3,350 crores through an Initial Public Offering (IPO). According to the Draft Red Herring Prospectus (DRHP), the planned IPO would be entirely through a new issue of equity…
