NEW DELHI: The
Congress is waiting for
Facebook to respond to its letter seeking the list of pages that the social media platform said were affiliated to the party and taken down for violating its policies on “coordinated inauthentic behaviour”, party insiders said.
While these people said the Congress’ digital ecosystem remained unaffected and none of its verified pages were removed, they called Facebook’s action “highly irresponsible” and “partisan”.
On Monday, Facebook announced in a global blog post that it had taken down the pages and accounts linked to the IT cell of the Congress. As per the company, the page admins and account owners of these pages typically posted about local news and political issues including on the upcoming elections, candidate views as well as criticism of political opponents including the
BJP. These accounts and pages also spent around $39,000 for advertising on Facebook, paid for in Indian rupees.
“While the people behind this activity attempted to conceal their identities, our review found that it was connected to individuals associated with the
IT cell of INC,” the post by Nathaniel Gleicher, head of cyber security policy at Facebook, said.
Congress workers said they never had so many affiliated pages to begin with and expected Facebook to “come clean” with the names of all the pages taken down.
Facebook did not respond to an email seeking comment.
“There are many pages on Facebook that have built an audience and use it to earn money as well as advertise. They might have shared anti-Modi content but the Congress never had so many affiliated pages,” said a person who has worked on
Congress campaigns. “The party’s position would have been very different if it had so many affiliates. I think the party should challenge Facebook’s statement as this is highly irresponsible.”