Daijiworld Media Network
New Delhi, Apr 1: The Congress on Monday April 1 denied Facebook's claims on removing 687 pages and accounts linked to the party owing to 'coordinated inauthentic behaviour'.
The party said that none of its official pages have been affected and it was awaiting a list of pages/accounts removed from the social media company.
"This is to clarify no official pages run by INC have been taken down. Additionally, all pages run by our verified volunteers are also unaffected. In the mean time, we are awaiting a response from Facebook to provide us a list of all pages/accounts that they have taken down," Congress said in a tweet.
"We don’t just react to news reports. We have to check the veracity of the news report," said Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari when asked to react to the news.
"We have the right to check what has been published. Any news organisation cannot claim what they print is gospel," he pointed out.
"Maybe the pages are not linked to us and maybe the news report is not correct," he said.
Facebook said in its investigation it was found that individuals used fake accounts and joined various groups to disseminate their content and increase engagement. Their posts included local news and criticism of political opponents such as Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
"While the people behind this activity attempted to conceal their identities, our review found that it was connected to individuals associated with an INC (Indian National Congress) IT Cell," Nathaniel Gleicher, Head of Cyber security Policy at Facebook, said in a statement.
In October 2017, it was alleged that bots were used to boost AICC president Rahul Gandhi’s presence on twitter.
With elections of the world’s largest democracy, round the corner, the social media giant is believed to be taking firm action to regulate political advertisements to ensure the platform is not misused in spreading fake information that could impact India’s democratic set-up.