- The Restructuring of Facebook’s Asia Pacific operations
Since its inception, Facebook India board was reporting to Facebook Asia-Pacific Entity based on Singapore, however there was a major change in Facebook’s organizational structure for Asia-Pacific region during January 2019. As per this change, Facebook India was carved out from its Asia-Pacific operations and made as a separate entity with a six-member board and started reporting directly to Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, California, USA.
To understand the recent censorship activities of Facebook on Tamil activists, a brief analysis of the profiles these six members of Facebook India Board are required:
1. Ajit Mohan – Vice President and Managing Director of Facebook India
2. Sandeep Bhushan – Director and Head of Global Marketing Solutions
3. Ankhi Das- Policy Director
4. Prashanth Aluru – Strategy and Operations Director
5. Manish Chopra- Director of Partnerships
6. Amrit Ahuja- Director of Communications
Among these six members, Ajit mohan (Vice president and Managing Director of Facebook India) and Ankhi Das (policy director of Facebook India) are key people on oppressing Tamil’s social media activities and they have a deep political motivation.
Ajit Mohan, who’s origin is from Kerala and served in housing and urban development ministries for 10 years under the previous Congress Government. He was also working closely with then Congress regime foreign policy makers such as MK Narayanan, Shiv Shankar Menon and Nirupama Rao, all from Kerala. He was also the director of India’s housing project in Sri Lanka after the brutal military genocidal onslaught on Tamils during 2009.
Ankhi das, who is the policy director of Facebook India, has the capacity to align Facebook’s policy with India’s foreign policy. After her appointment, she traveled to Colombo to meet the genocide criminal Mahinda Rajapaksa who has a pending UN investigation for crimes against humanity and war crimes. This meeting brings into focus of the Nexus between genocide criminal Mahinda Rajapaksa and India’s policy framers, as Mahinda was not occupying any position in Sri Lanka’s government when this meeting took place.
Mahinda’s influence on these incompetent foreign policy strategists played a vital role in changing the Facebook India’s policy against Tamils, the result of which is the frequent removal of Tamil national leader’s images from Facebook.
- Selling of Private Information
Facebook has transformed from a humble beginning of advocating freedom of expression to a conglomerate of curbing its user’s freedom of expression. Apart from these, the selling of Facebook user’s personal information such as their check in’s to various business consultants must be noted. On top of everything, Facebook has emerged as a major player during elections through its ability to control the information in its platforms for influencing the voters.
- Digital-Psychological Warfare on Electoral Voters
Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting company, has stolen personal information of about 50 million American voters from Facebook to develop software. Steve Bannon who is an advisor to the American President Donald Trump was the head of this firm during the software’s development. This software enabled Cambridge Analytica to understand the mindset of voters which allowed it to influence them by targeted advertisements. The process is identical to the one which is employed by Facebook where it gets search data from a browser for the in-app advertisements.
Similarly, last year Facebook bombarded its Sri Lankan based users with anti-Tamil and anti-islamic narratives during the presidential election of the sinhala government in the island, resulting in the victory of another criminal Gotabaya Rajapaksa. The meeting between Ankhi das and Genocide criminal Mahinda Rajapaksa must be understood with this backdrop.
- What Tamils Should Do?
Considering the influence of people who have taken futile initiatives in India’s foreign policy out of their Anti Tamil mindset by undermining the welfare of Indian union, the onus of Tamil activists is to raise the mafia like anti-democratic behavior of the Facebook India board-members to its headquarters at California. Moreover, other social media platforms such as twitter should be used to expose the tyranny of these mafias.
The CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, should understand the aspirations of Tamils who constitute more than 10 million of his platform’s total user base.
If possible, Tamils should also take an initiative to create alternative social media and data repository to share and save their contents.
- Reference
- https://www.livemint.com/Companies/SZ6Di9irz2zjQo8aG2BuLM/Facebook-brings-India-on-par-with-Menlo-Park.html
- https://www.hindustantimes.com/tech/pm-modi-finds-a-special-mention-in-ceo-zuckerberg-s-manifesto-for-facebook/story-mEbGWsZQ5Ct7v05RVMkvhO.html
- https://www.tamilguardian.com/content/mahinda-rajapaksa-discusses-%E2%80%98fake-news%E2%80%99-and-exchanges-gifts-facebook-officials
- https://tfipost.com/2018/09/facebook-india-ajit-mohan-01/
- https://www.newsclick.in/part-3-who-were-key-players-responsible-facebooks-support-modi-and-bjp
- https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/cambridge-analytica-facebook-influence-us-election
