New Delhi: Internal company documents provided by Facebook whistleblower Sophie Zhang to India’s parliamentary committee on information technology have specifically named BJP MP Vinod Kumar Sonkar as having benefited from a network of fake and inauthentic accounts that were not taken down by the social media giant despite being red-flagged.
Zhang has been waiting for nearly six months for Lok Sabha speaker Om Birla to grant permission for her to depose before the parliamentary panel.
In 2019, the former Facebook (now Meta) data scientist found four networks of inauthentic accounts, two helping the Congress and two others benefiting the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. The two pro-Congress networks had 51 accounts and 526 accounts. The network with 526 accounts had around 100 active accounts per day and was helping amplify the party’s agenda in Punjab elections.
The first pro-BJP network had 65 accounts, and it, along with the two pro-Congress networks, was taken down by the Facebook team a few weeks later on December 19, 2019.
The second pro-BJP network which Zhang identified had 54 inauthentic accounts and is one in which she believes was associated with the personal account of Vinod Kumar Sonkar, a BJP MP from Kaushambi (UP) and current chairperson of the parliamentary committee on Ethics.
This one, Zhang alleges, was never taken down by Facebook and was allowed to operate even after five repeated requests from her.
An inauthentic account (often referred to as a fake...
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