Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s statement in a recent podcast has created tension for the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP). BJP MP Nishikant Dubey, who heads the parliamentary committee on communication and information technology, said that his team will summon Zuckerberg over his statement that the incumbent government in India lost the 2024 elections due to mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“My committee will summon me for this misinformation. Incorrect information tarnishes the image of any democratic country,” wrote Dubey on social media platform X.
The podcast is part of a series of media appearances by Mark Zuckerberg after he announced the end of the third-party fact-checking system. This along with other controversial changes in the meta platform content policy has become a point of discussion across social media users. For Zuckerberg, this change was important because post-Covid, people have lost their trust in information given by the government.
Says Zuckerberg
“It’s not just the US. I think a lot of people in the US focus on this as a kind of an American phenomenon, but I kind of think that the reaction to Covid probably caused a breakdown and trust in a lot of governments around the world. I mean 2024 was a big election year around the world and all these countries, India, just like a ton of countries that had elections and the incumbents basically lost every single one. There is some sort of a global phenomenon…. 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 is global, not just the US, but like a very broad decrease in trust, at least in that set of incumbents and maybe in sort of these democratic institutions overall.” said Meta CEO, Zuckerberg.
This comment was fact-checked by Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnav on Monday. He called out the Meta chief over his ‘erroneous assertions’ regarding the government, saying it was disappointing to see the billionaire spread misinformation.
.){kind=link}