By Ranjona Banerji
The expose by TheWire.in that Amit Malviya, head of the BJP’s IT cell gets special privileges from Meta should hardly surprise anyone.
https://thewire.in/tech/amit-malviya-instagram-meta-xcheck
The expose by Jahnavi Sen suggests that Malviya can dictate to Instagram – owned by Meta, as the Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook empire was recently renamed after one more round of bad publicity – which posts to take down, regardless of their content. He also is allowed to post what he likes regardless of Instagram’s rule because he has been placed under Instagram’s special XCheck programme for celebrities.
This is not the first instance of the BJP dictating to Facebook/Meta or other digital platforms. And Facebook/Meta has a long history of pandering to rightwing ideology, allowing it to spread lies and manipulations in order to manipulate minds and thoughts. The Cambridge Analytica case of Facebook’s involvement in both Brexit and Donald Trump’s presidential election are not so far away.
Mark Zuckerberg had approached India to allow its “free basics” plan to go through, where Facebook would be able to control internet content on the premise and enticement of free internet for subscribers. The plan was carefully disguised as a welfare scheme to open the internet to all. That the plan did not overtly succeed was only because of the courts of the time and a small group of free internet activists.
Soon after this appeared to vanish was the case of the BJP placing people within Facebook India, who could control how the BJP is portrayed on social media and then remove content which was critical or questioning. Ankhi Das was India’s policy head and was accused by the Wall Street Journal of taking down content which showed the BJP in a bad light, or which was critical of the BJP.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-54715995
Ankhi Das resigned and was replaced by Shivnath Thukral who was also said to be pro-BJP.
https://www.thequint.com/tech-and-auto/shivnath-thukral-profile-ankhi-das-facebook-india-interim-replacement
Thus the alleged leeway shown by Meta to the BJP government is no surprise. Meta and Malviya have not spoken to The Wire yet. Meta’s Andy Stone has questioned the story on Twitter but not more than that.
We know that the government has tried over and again to control social media and to rein in digital platforms. It also knows that with its massive success in containing traditional media to its own narrative, the digital fortress, such as it is, will eventually fall. That there is some resistance is only because of a very small group of activists and journalists.
The Wire story is largely about one account whose posts were taken down. There must be several others. Judging from Meta’s weak defence of algorithms controlling what counts as “offensive”, we fall into that amorphous terrain where it appears that massive digital platforms have no ways, by their own admissions or their own excuses, of controlling content. Which often is shown up to be a lie since they somehow manage to police anti-fascists, anti-hate and anti-rightwing content without any issues at all.
It is only when you flag hatred, whether against women or caste discrimination, or race discrimination or Islamophobia or anti-Semitism that these “algorithms” suddenly get hyperactive.
The more things change…
Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She writes on MxMIndia on Tuesdays and Fridays. Her views here are personal