Amidst the raging debate about Facebook’s alleged interference in the elections in India, the social media giant replying to a letter from the Congress, has said it takes “allegations of bias seriously” and denounces “hate and bigotry” in all forms.

General secretary in-charge of Congress K.C. Venugopal had written to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg following reports by the Wall Street Journal and the Time magazine about the conduct of Facebook and WhatsApp India’s leadership team, alleging bias and proximity with the ruling BJP.

Neil Potts, Public Policy Director of Facebook, has said, “First and foremost, we want to take this opportunity to state that we are non-partisan and strive to ensure that our platforms remain a space where people can express themselves freely. We take allegations of bias seriously and want to make clear that we denounce hate and bigotry in all forms.”

He sought to assure the Congress that Facebook’s “Community Standards” prohibit attacks against people based on their protected characteristics including religion, caste, ethnicity and national origin. Facebook’s India head Ajit Mohan had told the same thing to the standing committee on Information and Technology at a meeting held on Thursday. The members however asked for a written reply on how these community standards measure up to the Indian laws and if there are any areas of conflict between the two.

Mr. Potts said Facebook has “removed and will continue to remove hateful content by public figures in India on our platforms”. He said Facebook has an extensive team to enforce the policies on hate speech which includes a community of external voices, including civil society organisations, academics and subject experts. “These decisions are not made unilaterally by any one person; rather, they are inclusive of different views from teams around the company, a process that is critical to making sure we consider, understand and account for both the local and global contexts,” Mr. Potts said.

He said Facebook has removed 22.5 million pieces of hate speech content between April and June in 2020, up from 1.6 million pieces removed in the last quarter of 2017.

The BJP too has accused Facebook’s employees of supporting people from a political predisposition that lost successive elections and ‘abusing’ Prime Minister and senior Cabinet Ministers. In a three-page letter to Mr. Zuckerberg, IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad flagged alleged “bias and inaction” by individuals in the Facebook India team on complaints by people supportive of right-of-centre ideology.