New Delhi: Shekhar Gupta, editor-in-chief of The Print shared some considerable elements about the on-going Facebook controversy. The social media giant is accused of favoring the ruling BJP government in the country.
It all started with the Indian branch of the company refusing to apply it’s ‘hate speech rules’ to certain BJP politicians on the behest of its senior executive.
World economy
Shekhar Gupta puts forth the facts which reveal how the social media giants dominate the world economy.
In global debates, there exists an acronym – GAFAM – which stands for Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon. These companies have market caps bigger than GDP’s of most of nations.
Here are the cap markets of the GAFAM companies:
Apple – $1.96 trillion, Microsoft – $1.5 trillion, Amazon – $1.57 trillion, Facebook – $750 billion, Alphabet which owns Google – $1.02 trillion
Facebook’s cap market is almost four times bigger than India’s most valuable company i.e Reliance Industries. Facebook has invested $5.7 billion into Jio platform of Reliance.
“When we look at Facebook, we aren’t looking at a company which just comes in to fight an ideological battle. These are companies driven by only objective i.e Money,” said Gupta.
New York Times market value is $7.3 bn, News Corp which owns WSJ is $8 bn.
Gig Economy
Gupta says the Publishing and Journalism depends on GAFAM. The journalists are the blue collar workers of this gig economy. We produce stuff for which these gig companies provide the market place. They own the market and the pricing. These five companies get much more value out of our creativity.
“These companies function almost like nation states. They operate in their major market as if they are Nations. Such giants don’t let individual employees, not matter how powerful they may be, to hijack the company’s policy,” said Gupta addressing Das’s intervention to protect Raja Singh from the hate speech cluster.
India is the Facebook’s largest market. The company earns thru’ its followers. In such scenario, the company, which is only driven by money, will never be at odds with the ruling government of India, Gupta concluded.
Here’s the video of Shekhar Gupta explaining his research work about the gig companies and the present chaos about Facebook’s inclination towards the ruling elite.
According to the Wall Street Journal, BJP MP Raja Singh published anti-Muslim posts on Facebook. He said Rohingya Muslim refugees should be shot and called Indian Muslims traitors, while also threatening to demolish mosques.
But when the matter of hate posts made by Raja Singh was raised with Facebook’s top India official, Ankhi Das, she reportedly told Facebook staff members that punishing violations by politicians from the BJP would damage the company’s business prospects in the country.
“Das’s intervention on behalf of Mr. Singh is part of a broader pattern of favoritism by Facebook toward Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party and Hindu hard-liners,” told the Facebook’s current and former employees.