New Delhi: The Parliamentary Committee on Information Technology has summoned officials of Facebook and Twitter for January 21. The panel will question the social media giants over misuse of online news platforms.
“Evidence of representatives of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and to hear the views of the representatives of Facebook and Twitter on the subject ‘Safeguarding citizens’ rights and prevention of misuse of social/online news media platforms including special emphasis on women security in the digital space” read a Lok Sabha Secretariat notice.
Former union minister and senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor is the chairperson of the panel. The panel was constituted in the month of September last year.
Earlier, the committee had summoned Facebook’s India head Ajit Mohan over the issue of political bias on the social media platform.
The social media giant Facebook faced flak for showing the apparent political bias which surfaced after a Wall Street Journal report which was published in the month of August.
The allegations of a Facebook bias towards the BJP were reported in The Wall Street Journal in August 2020 and had claimed that Ankhi Das, the platform’s then India Policy Head had opposed the idea of removing hate posts by BJP leaders, warning that this could hamper their ‘commercial interests’. Das has now quit Facebook.
