Facebook responds to Congress’ charge of political bias, says it is non-partisan and denounces hate

New Delhi: Facebook Inc has promised the Congress that it will continuously remove hate postsi by Indian public figures from its platforms and also assured the Opposition party of its commitment to “non-partisan approach” and opposition to “hate and bigotry in all forms”.

“On the question of hateful content by public figures, we want to assure you that our community standards prohibit attacks against people based on their protected characteristics, including religion, caste, ethnicity, and national origin. In line with our hate speech policy, we have removed and will continue to remove hateful content by public figures in India on our platforms”, Neil Potts, public policy director at Facebook Inc, wrote to AICC general secretary (Org) K C Venugopal on Thursday. Venugopal had complained to Facebook Inc chief Mark Zuckerberg, alleging “political bias” and negligence in deleting certain kind of hate posts by the Facebook India team heads. The AICC had also threatened legal actions.