A day after its strong stance against Twitter, the parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology, headed by Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, on Saturday, turned down Facebook’s request for coming for a virtual meeting instead of physical representation citing the company’s Covid policies. The committee, in fact, proposed vaccinating the social media giant’s officials who will come for the meeting with the panel.
The dates for the said meeting has not been finalised yet.
The parliamentary standing committee has also decided that all other social media and web platforms like YouTube, Google, etc. must send their representations physically before the panel.
In its response to the committee, Facebook said its officers could not appear before the committee as the company]s rules prohibit officials to attend any meeting in person during the period of the second wave of the Covid pandemic.
With the FB officials making a bid to appear online, all the members of the standing committee made it clear that no meeting can be held online and the Facebook officials must be present physically.
“Taking cognizance of Facebook’s reply, now the chairman of the committee, sought the list of Facebook officials whom the company wants to send before the committee. The chairman said the committee will provide COVID vaccination to such officials and will also give enough time to come before the committee,” sources said.
On Friday, the committee had called Twitter officials on similar issues and two of their senior officials also appeared before the committee physically. Both the officials of Twitter told the committee that they “give priority to the rules of their company” following which they were told that the law of the land was supreme and which had to be followed.
The committee has taken cognizance of the fact that social media platforms are being run remotely from outside the country and the rules made by the government are also being ignored. The committee is also particularly concerned about the misuse of social media platforms regarding the propagation of rumours as well as women’s safety.