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The move assumes significance as a series of reports recently citing internal documents showed ”a struggle with misinformation, hate speech and celebrations of violence” in India – Facebook’s biggest market with over 40 crore users.
Researchers at the social media giant had pointed out that there are groups and pages replete with inflammatory and misleading content on its platform, as per US media reports.
According to sources privy to the development, the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) has written to Facebook asking for information around the algorithms and processes used by the platform.
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When contacted, Facebook declined to comment. As per data cited by the Indian government earlier this year, there are 53 crore WhatsApp users, 41 crore Facebook subscribers and 21 crore Instagram account holders.
It is pertinent to mention here that India enforced new IT intermediary rules earlier this year, aiming to bring greater accountability for big tech companies, including Twitter and Facebook.