Facebook "filters" content critical of controversial Art of Living's World Cultural Festival off Jamuna in Delhi

Facts of come to light suggesting that Facebook, world’s biggest social networking site, has sought to block or filter posts critical of well-known preacher and Hindu religious guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, involved in a major environmental controversy for holding World Cultural Festival on the banks of Yamuna in Delhi.
A well-known Ahmedabad-based activist and social entrepreneur, Roshan Shah, has written to those responsible for handling the Facebook India Online Services Private Limited that his Facebook timeline (https://www.facebook.com/roshiley) for the last two days was flooded with “environmentalists’ and nationalists’ posts” which were “very critical” of the culture festival.
However, to his utter surprise, “all of a sudden this morning I saw no posts”, he said in his complaint lodged to the Facebook India Online Services Private Limited on March 12, even as sending it to three of its directors, Vikram Ravindra Mamadipudi, David William Kling, and Jaspal Singh Athwal.
“Even my posts on the same subject with Sri Sri and Ravi Shankar keywords did not show up”, Shah said, adding, these directors of Facebook India Online Services – which operates from Hitech City, Hyderabad, are “responsible for day to day operations of operations of facebook.com in India”.
Calling “content filtering” violation of Freedom of speech, Shah said, “Directors and team should be prosecuted and penalized for this”. Threatening legal action, he added, “The whole concept of Social Media goes for a toss here.”
Submitting that Facebook “is operating as Online Social Networking site with primarily user generated content”, Shah said, “Facebook users make online friends on Facebook and share content on own or friends’ timeline freely which ideally comes up and should come up in one or more of (a) other friends timeline; (b) friends of friends timeline and (c) general public timeline and d) followers and general public for public posts.”
“People who follow their friends on Facebook ought to see content of friends whom they follow first on priority over other general content which is not from friends excluding certain sponsored content”, he continued.
“Facebook tried to control social media content via unsuccessful attempt promoting free basics, where the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) ruled in favour of net neutrality and Facebook thereby got a jolt on its Free Basics agenda”, Shah said.
He added, “Now to circumvent that agenda, Facebook has found a new illegal way of content filtering and making money by blocking content on timeline”, giving evidence through a youtube video which he shot about 10 am Indian Standard Time on March 12 regarding how this was done.

Linking the filtering of his Facebook posts with Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s Art of Living Foundation receiving Rs 2.5 crore from the Union Ministry of Culture for holding the World Culture Festival, Shah said, the Indian army was “used for bridge construction” and trees were “chopped off” – which “ticked off social media users on Facebook to slam consistently for the last two days on this act of Ravi Shankar and his team.”
The posts, he said, also slammed “Sri Sri’s collusion with Union government to abuse taxpayers’ money”, wondering if Facebook has now “another revenue model of content filtering”.
“Facebook can push its sponsored content”, Shah said, adding, however, it has “no right to filter my content or my or friends or user generated contents on timelines.”
Calling this “a dangerous model” which requires “immediate investigation and a written response from Facebook” on how “Rs 2.5 crore grant got filtered”, Shah said, “Even the National Green Tribunal has slapped Rs 5 crore fine on Art of Living Foundation”, yet, “Facebook is trying to help such criminals by filtering negative content is abetting crime.”

Comments

Ahmedabad's civic chaos: Drainage woes, waterlogging, and the illusion of Olympic dreams

In response to my blog on overflowing gutter lines at several spots in Ahmedabad's Vejalpur, a heavily populated area, a close acquaintance informed me that it's not just the middle-class housing societies that are affected by the nuisance. Preeti Das, who lives in a posh locality in what is fashionably called the SoBo area, tells me, "Things are worse in our society, Applewood."

RP Gupta a scapegoat to help Govt of India manage fallout of Adani case in US court?

RP Gupta, a retired 1987-batch IAS officer from the Gujarat cadre, has found himself at the center of a growing controversy. During my tenure as the Times of India correspondent in Gandhinagar (1997–2012), I often interacted with him. He struck me as a straightforward officer, though I never quite understood why he was never appointed to what are supposed to be top-tier departments like industries, energy and petrochemicals, finance, or revenue.

PharmEasy: The only online medical store which revises prices upwards after confirming the order

For senior citizens — especially those without a family support system — ordering medicines online can be a great relief. Shruti and I have been doing this for the last couple of years, and with considerable success. We upload a prescription, receive a verification call from a doctor, and within two or three days, the medicines are delivered to our doorstep.

Powering pollution, heating homes: Why are Delhi residents opposing incineration-based waste management

While going through the 50-odd-page report Burning Waste, Warming Cities? Waste-to-Energy (WTE) Incineration and Urban Heat in Delhi , authored by Chythenyen Devika Kulasekaran of the well-known advocacy group Centre for Financial Accountability, I came across a reference to Sukhdev Vihar — a place where I lived for almost a decade before moving to Moscow in 1986 as the foreign correspondent of the daily Patriot and weekly Link .

Environmental report raises alarm: Sabarmati one of four rivers with nonylphenol contamination

A new report by Toxics Link , an Indian environmental research and advocacy organisation based in New Delhi, in collaboration with the Environmental Defense Fund , a global non-profit headquartered in New York, has raised the alarm that Sabarmati is one of five rivers across India found to contain unacceptable levels of nonylphenol (NP), a chemical linked to "exposure to carcinogenic outcomes, including prostate cancer in men and breast cancer in women."

Dalit rights and political tensions: Why is Mevani at odds with Congress leadership?

While I have known Jignesh Mevani, one of the dozen-odd Congress MLAs from Gujarat, ever since my Gandhinagar days—when he was a young activist aligned with well-known human rights lawyer Mukul Sinha’s organisation, Jan Sangharsh Manch—he became famous following the July 2016 Una Dalit atrocity, in which seven members of a family were brutally assaulted by self-proclaimed cow vigilantes while skinning a dead cow, a traditional occupation among Dalits.

Tracking a lost link: Soviet-era legacy of Gujarati translator Atul Sawani

The other day, I received a message from a well-known activist, Raju Dipti, who runs an NGO called Jeevan Teerth in Koba village, near Gujarat’s capital, Gandhinagar. He was seeking the contact information of Atul Sawani, a translator of Russian books—mainly political and economic—into Gujarati for Progress Publishers during the Soviet era. He wanted to collect and hand over scanned soft copies, or if possible, hard copies, of Soviet books translated into Gujarati to Arvind Gupta, who currently lives in Pune and is undertaking the herculean task of collecting and making public soft copies of Soviet books that are no longer available in the market, both in English and Indian languages.

Boeing 787 under scrutiny again after Ahmedabad crash: Whistleblower warnings resurface

A heart-wrenching tragedy has taken place in Ahmedabad. As widely reported, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner plane crashed shortly after taking off from the city’s airport, currently operated by India’s top tycoon, Gautam Adani. The aircraft was carrying 230 passengers and 12 crew members. As expected, the crash has led to an outpouring of grief across the country. At the same time, there have been demands for the resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Venkaiah Naidu. The most striking comment came from BJP MP Subramanian Swamy, who stated : "When a train derailed in the 1950s, Lal Bahadur Shastri resigned. On the same morality, I demand PM Modi, HM Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Naidu resign so that a free and fair inquiry can be held. All that Modi and his associates have been doing so far is gallivanting, which must stop." Amidst widespread mourning, some fringe elements sought to communalize the tragedy. One post ...

Revisiting Gijubhai: Pioneer of child-centric education and the caste debate

It was Krishna Kumar, the well-known educationist, who I believe first introduced me to the name — Gijubhai Badheka (1885–1939). Hailing from Bhavnagar, known as the cultural capital of the Saurashtra region of Gujarat, Gijubhai, Kumar told me during my student days, made significant contributions to the field of pedagogy — something that hasn't received much attention from India's education mandarins. At that time, Kumar was my tutorial teacher at Kirorimal College, Delhi University.

Search This Blog