Facebook official's internal messages reveal political bias, says report

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At the centre of allegations that Facebook did not apply hate speech rules on members of the ruling BJP, an executive of the social networking site has been named in a second Wall Street Journal report on internal messages that allegedly show political bias.

According to the report, Ankhi Das, head of public policy in Facebook India, "made internal postings over several years" detailing her support for the ruling BJP and disparaging its main rival, behaviour some staff saw as conflicting with the company's pledge to remain neutral when it comes to elections.

Das, the report claims, posted the day before Prime Minister Narendra Modi emerged victorious in the 2014 national election, "We lit a fire to his social media campaign and the rest is of course history."

In a separate post on the Congress defeat, Das praised Modi and wrote, "It's taken 30 years of grassroots work to rid India of state socialism finally." Das called Facebook's top global elections official, Katie Harbath, her "longest fellow traveller" in the company's work with his campaign.

In a photo, Das stood, smiling, between Modi and Harbath. The report says the posts cover the years 2012 to 2014 and were made to a Facebook group designed for employees in India, which included several hundred employees, though it was open to anyone in the company globally who wanted to join.

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