Lok Sabha Elections 2019: The massive clean-up drive kicked-off by social media giant Facebook ahead of much-awaited Lok Sabha Elections – which resulted in the removal of as many as 687 pro-Indian National Congress (INC) pages and accounts – appears to have a larger impact on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). According to a Facebook blog post, 15 pages, groups and accounts that were spreading pro-BJP information were also suspended. However, what’s worth noting is the fact that while these 687 associated with the IT cell of Congress had a total of 2 lakh followers, the pro-BJP content - 1 Page, 12 Facebook accounts, 1 Group, and 1 Instagram account - had over 26 lakh followers in total.

Further, the amount of money invested in promoting pro-BJP content for advertising was far higher than those promoting pro-Congress content. The pro-Congress pages saw a total expenditure of around Rs 27 lakh, whereas, the pro-BJP pages spent nearly Rs 50 lakh on Facebook ads since 2014. Confirming the same, Facebook wrote: “Around $70,000 was spent for ads on Facebook (by the pro-BJP pages), paid for in Indian rupees. The first advertisement ran in June 2014 and the most recent ad ran in Feb 2019.”

Soon after the crackdown was reported by the social media giant, Congress took to Twitter and informed that none of its official pages were taken down. However, an official statement from the saffron party is still awaited.


Facebook, however, clarified that all the accounts removed did not share political content, but exhibited ‘coordinated inauthentic behaviour’, implying that they were fake accounts used to manipulate the masses.

“Although the people behind this activity attempted to conceal their identities, our investigation found that this activity was linked to individuals associated with an Indian IT firm, Silver Touch. They were using both authentic and fake accounts to share content about local news and political events. There were posts on government action, the upcoming elections, the BJP, and alleged misconduct of political opponents, including the INC,” Facebook said in its blog post.

Read the full report published by Facebook here

The entire clean-up drive by Facebook was an attempt to put a check on false news and spreading of misinformation ahead of the General Elections which is scheduled to start from April 11 across the country. Both Facebook and its entity WhatsApp has been under the government’s radar to stop the spread of fake news and anything that might influence the country's electoral process.