On Tuesday, senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi bashed the social media platforms for their alleged partial and biased stand and accused them of having a major say in the Indian political system. He said that the social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp favor the ruling political party in India and that it’s respective CEOs never met, never considered the opposition parties.
“I don’t believe that the large social media companies are neutral. The way the Indian elections are being fought, they are essentially being fought on these platforms. They are being fought on WhatsApp, not so much on Twitter but Facebook and WhatsApp definitely”, he said. Gandhi was speaking at the event that was organized by the School of the Humanities and Social Science at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge University, as part of a series of events celebrating the 75th year of Indian independence.
The Congress leader further specifically took a jibe at Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and stated that he favors the Prime Minister of India and his party. “The head of Facebook has never met an Indian opposition leader. He comes, he meets the Prime Minister and goes home. The CEO of the Facebook in Delhi was also a BJP person. So how can we say that these social media platforms are impartial? Major politics happens on these platforms”, he reiterated.
He also shared his personal example alleging that his new twitter followers vanished from 40,000 daily to zero. Gandhi in August 2021 had held protests seeking justice for a nine-year-old Dalit girl who was raped, murdered and then cremated by the perpetrators in Delhi. He however had revealed the identity of the minor on social media following which the Twitter had removed his tweet which also contained a picture of the parents of the deceased minor girl.
“On my Twitter account, I used to get 40,000 twitter users a day. I went to Delhi for the protest and after that magically my twitter users went to zero. We wrote to Twitter and sought the reason but no satisfactory answer was provided. Three months later we contacted the Wall Street Journal and the day before the article was scheduled to publish, my users were back to 40,000 a day. Same is with the WhatsApp. I don’t believe that these are neutral platforms”, he reiterated.
Interestingly, as Gandhi accused the Facebook, WhatsApp and it’s CEO of inducting partiality in its functioning, it becomes important to note that the former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey had met Congress leader Rahul Gandhi to talk about ‘tackling the menace of fake news’. Twitter CEO had also admitted the left-leaning bias of his employees and showcased bias against right-leaning accounts.
It is interesting to note that all the major social media companies are known for their bias against the right wing ideologies and favouring left-liberals, which is evident in the permanent banning of former US president Donald Trump by all of them. But still, Rahul Gandhi accuses social media of supporting the BJP in India.
At the event that marked the conclusion of Gandhi’s UK tour which began last week, the Congress leader also accused the Indian Media of partial functioning. “Around 140-160 media entities are owned by one person. There’s a media monopoly and then there are multiple business monopolies that support and finance the Bharatiya Janata Party”, he said.
He added that Congress Party who is facing the alleged hegemony in what he referred to as the ‘union of states’ of India, would adopt the old school politics and drive the young energy to launch protest movements and massive social movements in the country. “Back to Gandhi”, he affirmed on May 24.
During his visit to United Kingdom, Gandhi on May 23 in ‘Ideas for India’ conference claimed that India was in a horrible position and that a political revolution was required. To corroborate his wild claims further, he stated that the Bharatiya Janata Party has poured kerosene around the country and that a single spark is enough to blow the country up. He called for a ‘mass action’ within the country while at the same time called for foreign interference to end the nexus of the ‘deep state’ and save his ‘Idea of India’.