With Facebook removing almost 702 pages and accounts from India linked to the Congress Party, several aspersions have been cast on the social media giant’s policies. A Facebook statement said “we have removed 138 pages and 549 accounts which it found “connected to individuals associated with an INC IT Cell.” The page admins and account owners typically posted about local news and political issues, including the upcoming elections, candidate views, and criticism of political opponents including the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Of late, Facebook has been taking stringent measures to regulate political advertisements to ensure the the platform is not spreading fake news, especially with Lok Sabha elections about to begin in just a few days. According to several leaders in the Opposition, this is going to indirectly benefit the BJP as they will have an undue advantage over the Congress following the removal of their accounts. Further, the Congress’ spend is comparatively lesser than that of the BJP on Facebook.
On the other hand, political observers also say that Facebook could also land up in trouble as it could be perceived as supporting the BJP’s agenda and pushing it secretly. “There is a possibility of this situation turning out to be like the one in America’s Presidential elections where Facebook was accused of promoting Trump,” said a political analyst. During the US Presidential campaign, there were accusations on the social media giant that the political ads on Facebook drove neutral voters to choose Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton. Interestingly, Trump was also the highest spender on social media ads during his campaign for Presidency.
A similar trend could be repeated in India, where Facebook could push a lot of fence-sitters to vote for Narendra Modi again in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections as the BJP is one of the highest spender on political campaigns on Facebook in India. Additionally, Narendra Modi’s 2014 social media campaign created a record of sorts for devising one of the best marketing strategies in the world, which earned him popularity and made him a social media star. The DNA of BJP is such that they believe in brand building which is part of their marketing juggernaut.
Even analysts claim that BJP is carpet-bombing social media, especially Facebook and Youtube to ensure that they reach every voter in every corner of India. According to a survey, BJP’s publicity blitz is so crazy that it is even ahead of Netflix, an American media-services and video streaming behemoth, and Trivago, a hotel price comparison website. Given that the saffron party spends so heavily, it is evident that it has a huge corporate backing in terms of financial donations.
With such huge spends and bets on Facebook to further political advertisements, will the social media giant fall in the same trap it faced in the US? Only time will tell.
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