Parliament panel grills FB officials

The parliamentary standing committee on information and technology held an over three-hour long meeting with Facebook officials and experts on Wednesday, with its members discussing recent allegations of political bias against the social media company before the meeting was adjourned with no conclusions.

Facebook officials were summoned following a string of media reports in the last three weeks that showed that a key executive from its India operations team intervened to protect a politician linked to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from action over hate speech.

“In response to overwhelming media interest in the meeting of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology that just adjourned, this is all I can say: we met for some three & a half hours & unanimously agreed to resume the discussion later, (including) with (representatives) of Facebook,” panel chair and Congress MP Shashi Tharoor said in a tweet.