Ashwini Vaishnaw Slams Mark Zuckerberg For His Statement On Lok Sabha Elections

Ashwini Vaishnaw Slams Mark Zuckerberg For His Statement On Lok Sabha Elections

SUMMARY

IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw expressed his disappointment on Meta CEO and chairman Mark Zuckerberg’s recent comments on the Indian parliamentary elections held in 2024

Zuckerberg, in a recent podcast of Joe Rogan, said that most incumbent governments, including India's, lost in the post-COVID electoral landscape

Tagging Meta, the minister said that it is disappointing to see misinformation from Mr. Zuckerberg himself

Electronics and IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw has expressed his disappointment on Meta CEO and chairman Mark Zuckerberg’s recent comments on the Indian parliamentary elections held in 2024.

In a post on X, Vaishnaw said that the people of India affirmed their trust in the NDA, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in the Lok Sabha elections held last year.

“Mr. Zuckerberg’s claim that most incumbent governments, including India in 2024 elections, lost post-COVID is factually incorrect,” he said.

In his post, Vaishnaw also tagged Meta and said that it is disappointing to “see misinformation from Mr. Zuckerberg himself”.

It is pertinent to note that Zuckerberg, in a recent podcast with Joe Rogan, said that most incumbent governments, including India’s, lost in the post-Covid electoral landscape.

Responding to a question, the Meta CEO had said, “… The reaction to Covid probably caused a breakdown in trust in a lot of governments around the world. Because 2024 was a big election year around the world, and there were a ton of countries that had elections, like India, and the incumbents basically lost every single one. So, there is some sort of a global phenomenon where whether it was because of inflation, because of the economic policies to deal with Covid, or just how the government dealt with Covid, (it) seems to have had this effect that’s global, not just in the US…”

This is not the first time that Meta, which owns Facebook and WhatsApp, has landed in choppy regulatory waters in India. In 2020, Facebook was caught in a political storm in the country over allegations of political bias. 

At the time, it was reported that the social media giant allegedly favoured ruling BJP by not addressing the hate speech from the party’s members. Opposition Congress then called for a probe into Facebook’s practices, arguing that the platform was undermining India’s electoral democracy. 

The company has also been under intense scrutiny in India over a slew of reasons, including issues with service reliability, flouting competition laws and non-compliance with government directions to curb misinformation and fake news on its multiple platforms. 

Last month, the Delhi HC ordered Meta to remove deepfakes purportedly featuring journalist Rajat Sharma. In the same order, the HC also asked Meta to disclose available “details” of the creators, including name, address, and phone number, of the doctored content. 

Meanwhile, the US-based social media juggernaut is also said to be looking to appeal against a Competition Commission of India (CCI) ruling, which found its messaging platform WhatsApp guilty of violating competition laws in connection with the 2021 privacy policy case and ordered the company to pay a penalty of INR 213.14 Cr.

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