Tamil Nadu: Facebook takes down 200 BJP accounts

CHENNAI: BJP candidate for Coimbatore C P Radhakrishnan and state functionary Vanathi Srinivasan were among the 200-odd people whose Facebook accounts were taken down after complaints of violation of election and conduct norms.

After the BJP IT wing swung into action, Radhakrishnan’s account was recovered, but Vanathi’s is yet to be reactivated.

BJP state IT wing president R Nirmal Kumar told TOI that political opponents had mobilised mass complaints against these accounts by paying money.

Social media platforms have algorithms that redflag and take down accounts after a critical number of complaints.

Verified accounts (in Twitter, the ones with a blue ‘verified’ badge), however, are not taken down without enquiry.

“My own FB and Twitter accounts were frozen for three days from last Friday. Some 2,000 Twitter handles of BJP sympathisers have been taken down. I had about five lakh followers. It is a big blow to us,” he said.

Kanyakumari constituency, which had about 100 active FB accounts that have an average following of 50,000 each, is the worst affected for the BJP.

“Vast content generated to popuralise the Centre’s welfare schemes have also been removed from YouTube. It was a systematic attack targeting our campaign on social media by opponents who are spending big money,” said Kumar.

BJP IT wing insiders said they bought several new SIM cards to create profiles to make up for the blocked accounts.

“We have set up a war room in Marthandam to create new FB and Twitter accounts to resume our online campaigns,” said Kumar.

The two major Dravidian parties in Tamil Nadu said that none of their official FB or Twitter accounts were taken down.

The DMK’s IT wing head Palanivel Thiayagarajan said they have authorised pages for each district units, besides the accounts of senior party leaders, party HQ and IT wing.

AIADMK’s IT wing said none of the party’s official accounts was hit.