The Facebook page of Goshamahal BJP MLA Raja Singh was banned from the social media site on Thursday, reported the Wall Street Journal (WSJ). The Facebook page in the name of the legislator, infamous for his hate speeches on Muslims, was suspended nearly three weeks after a report alleged that Facebook had shown favourable bias towards the BJP by relaxing their hate speech rules for members of the ruling party.
Responding to the suspension, Raja Singh told TNM, “I just got to know that all accounts operating on my name have been taken down. I’m very happy about this.”
The BJP MLA alleged that he had no access to his verified page for the past two years. “My official account was taken down in 2018 itself. I haven’t had an account since then. There were several accounts being operated on my name. I haven’t had an official account since 2018. I have written to Facebook several times regarding this.”
“We have banned Raja Singh from Facebook for violating our policy prohibiting those that promote or engage in violence and hate from having a presence on our platform,” a Facebook spokesperson said, according to NDTV.
A story published on August 15 in the WSJ alleged that one particular post made by Raja Singh had been classified as “dangerous hate speech” by employees of Facebook. In the post in question, Raja Singh reportedly said that Rohingya Muslim immigrants must be shot, and called Muslim “traitors”. He also threatened to tear down mosques.
According to WSJ, in spite of the post being flagged, Facebook’s rules against hate speech were not applied to him on the behest of Facebook India’s public policy head Ankhi Das, as it could hurt the company’s business prospects in India. The report also said that the social media giant had ignored its hate speech rules for at least three other “Hindu nationalist individuals and groups” besides Raja Singh.
In response to the allegations, Ajit Mohan, Facebook’s India head, said, “We take allegations of bias incredibly seriously, and want to make it clear that we denounce hate and bigotry in any form.”
“There is no place for hate speech on our platform. We have an impartial approach to dealing with content and are strongly governed by our Community Standards … We have removed and will continue to remove content posted by public figures in India when it violates our Community Standards,” Mohan added.
While Das was under fire for allowing hateful accounts to thrive on Facebook, another report by BuzzFeed News said that she had apologised to the Muslim staff for sharing a post that termed Muslims as a “degenerate community.”
The post originally written by a police officer during the Citizenship Amendment Act and National Registry of Citizens protests last year reportedly read, “nothing except purity of religion and implementation of Shariah matter”.
Offering an apology for her Islamophobia, Das reportedly said to the Muslim staff, “The intent of my personal Facebook post was not to denigrate Islam. It was to reflect my deep belief in celebrating feminism and civic participation. I value all perspectives I have heard over the past days about how the post was received and as a result I have deleted the post. I genuinely regret any hurt it may have caused, including to my Muslim colleagues in the company.”