The danger of social media being abused to hack democracy was rising and the government should put an end to the “systematic interference” of Facebook and other social media giants in electoral politics of the world’s largest democracy, Congress president Sonia Gandhi said on Wednesday.
Raising the issue during the Zero Hour in the Lok Sabha, Ms. Gandhi stated that global companies like Facebook and Twitter were increasingly used “to shape political narratives by leaders, political parties and their proxies”.
She noted that social media companies were not providing a level playing field to all political parties and referred to the investigation done by The Wall Street Journal last year in which it was claimed that Facebook bent its own rules on hate speech to favour politicians of the ruling party.
