Facebook, BJP and Narendra Modi: ‘The Wall Street Journal’ exposes FB’s chief India lobbyist Ankhi Das’s role in fuelling communal hatred and poison for “business prospects”. And reveals the conspiracy of silence of Indian media. @WSJ @newley @JeffHorwitz https://thenetpaper.substack.com/p/facebook-bjp-and-narendra-modi-how
From your deep understanding of Indian media, how many newspapers, news channels and news portals do you think will follow up @WSJ’s damning revelations on how @Facebook was being criminally misused by a well-connected FB lobbyist to curry favour with @narendramodi and the BJP?
@Facebook’s chief India lobbyist Ankhi Das’s 2017 essay praising @narendramodi, illustrated with FB’s thumbs-up logo, magically vanishes from Modi’s website within a day of the @WSJ expose of her role in allowing hate speech for “business prospects”. https://www.narendramodi.in/reflections/author/52734b2f
@Facebook senior management in India are ‘de facto’ campaign managers for the BJP. @Facebook’s Delhi office is virtually an extended BJP IT Cell”: what @derekobrienmp told the Rajya Sabha in June 2019 quoting from a book. @WSJ
“Get 3 lakh ‘genuine’ Facebook likes each, Modi tells BJP MPs”: While @Facebook’s lobbyist Ankhi Das was internally clearing the path for hate speech, in March 2018 @narendramodi was exhorting his MPs to get on to FB, which was already in BJP’s pocket: https://tinyurl.com/y6m347w6 
“[You] now have the gall to question us?”: IT minister @rsprasad’s undignified response to @RahulGandhi makes no attempt to deny @WSJ’s charge of @Facebook petting BJP’s hate mongrels. All it does is take cheap personal potshots, make vacuous claims, and indulge in whataboutery.
“We used to joke that it was like she was @narendramodi’s granddaughter”: An unnamed @Facebook executive on its chief India lobbyist Ankhi Das quoted in the @guardian, in 2016. She “never said no” to any information Modi’s campaign team sought before the 2014 election.
@Facebook organised a “technology training programme” for women MPs of the Lok Sabha in Parliament House annexe, despite a bar on foreign entities being allowed entry. LS speaker @ombirlakota’s office sent out invites via SMS, says Mohua Moitra of Trinamul Congress on @ndtv
It takes all the skills of a ‘West Coast’ cartoonist to reveal to the world that the ‘f’ in @Facebook isn’t so flat and two-dimensional. @satishacharya’s superb take on how Mark Zuckerberg’s company provided the ammunition to BJP’s hate mongrels for “business prospects”. @WSJ
@Facebook’s BJP-bias mess doesn’t end with its chief lobbyist Ankhi Das; it extends to her deputy Shivnath Thukral, who assisted BJP in its 2014 election campaign. In 2019, he walked out of a meeting when @Avaaz brought up an Assam BJP MLA’s hate speech. https://time.com/5883993/india-facebook-hate-speech-bjp/
It took journalists from @WSJ, @TIME and @ReutersIndia to bell the #AnkhiDas cat. The entire Indian media universe willingly ignored @Facebook’s insidious role in distorting Indian society and democracy—or was happily cutting “partnership” deals and eating the crumbs thrown at it
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