'Beyond Partisan Politics': Sonia Gandhi Urges Govt to End Facebook Interference
New Delhi: Congress president Sonia Gandhi in parliament on Wednesday, March 16, urged the government to put an end to the "systematic interference" of Facebook and other social media giants in India's electoral politics.
Making a Zero Hour submission in the Lok Sabha, Gandhi referred to reports published in Al Jazeera and The Reporters' Collective on Facebook’s internal algorithms offering cheaper advertisement deals for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) when compared to opposition political parties.
"On average, Facebook charged the BJP, its candidates and affiliated organisations 41,844 rupees ($546) to show an ad one million times. But the main opposition party, the Indian National Congress, its candidates and affiliated organisations had to pay 53,776 rupees ($702)— nearly 29 percent more—for the same number of views," the report said.
These cheaper rates were on electoral campaign ads that saw similar reach, although it’s unclear by how much the target audiences differed, The Wire noted in its summary of the analysis by The Reporters' Collective and ad.watch.
"I urge the government to put an end to the systematic interference and influence of Facebook and other social media giants in the electoral politics of the world's largest democracy. This is beyond partisan politics," she said.
"We need to protect democracy and social harmony regardless of who is in power," Gandhi added.
Part one of this investigation found that before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, an organisation called NEWJ – short for New Emerging World of Journalism Limited – paid for a series of ads on Facebook that promoted BJP and lampooned the opposition.
Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi also tweeted on the reports and made a wordplay on Metaverse, calling it "Meta-worse for democracy".
Gandhi shared a compilation of news reports on Twitter, accusing the social media giant of helping the BJP reach out to voters during the elections.
Meta-worse for democracy. pic.twitter.com/61n0wFj6gQ
— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) March 16, 2022
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