The Bharatiya Janata Party had flagged a list of 44 pages opposed to it to Facebook India in January 2019, ahead of the Lok Sabha election...
The Bharatiya Janata Party had flagged a list of 44 pages opposed to it to Facebook India in January 2019, ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, claiming they were “in violation of expected standards” and carried posts “not in line with facts”, The Indian Express reported on Tuesday. Currently, 14 of these pages are no longer on the social media platform.
The official account of Bhim Army, satire site “We hate BJP”, unofficial pages supporting the Opposition Congress and another page called “The Truth of Gujarat”, which shares mostly factchecks done by Alt-News, were among those flagged by the saffron party. The pages taken down by Facebook India includes those in support of journalists Ravish Kumar and Vinod Dua.
Meanwhile, Facebook’s India team was also asked by the ruling party to reinstate 17 deleted pages. The BJP also wanted to “monetise” two right-leaning news websites – OpIndia and The Chaupal – to let them receive advertisement revenue for their content. OpIndia has been regularly accused of spreading misinformation and hate speech.
Vikas Pandey, the founder of The Chaupal, said Facebook revoked his site’s monetisation in 2019 and has not been allowed after that.
Facebook told BJP’s Information Technology cell chief Amit Malviya that the pages were taken down “erroneously”, according to the newspaper. All the 17 pages, which have been reinstated, share content almost exclusively...
