Meta India has apologized for comments made by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in which he said that the Indian government lost the 2024 elections due to its management of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Shivnath Thukral, Meta India's Vice President, acknowledged the error in a post on X (formerly Twitter), stating that while the observation holds true for several countries, it does not apply to India. He emphasized that India is a crucial market for Meta and that the company is committed to its continued growth within the country.
The apology was made after BJP MP Nishikant Dubey, who heads the parliamentary committee on communications and information technology, announced that his team would call Meta for questioning over CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s statement. Dubey wrote on X, "My committee will summon Meta for this misinformation. Incorrect information tarnishes the image of any democratic country."
The situation escalated further when Meta India's Vice President, Shivnath Thukral, went beyond acknowledging the error. He stated that the organization "will have to apologize to the Indian Parliament and the people of this country for this mistake."
This stronger stance came after Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw publicly criticized Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg for his "erroneous assertion" regarding the Indian government's performance in the 2024 elections. Union Minister Vaishnaw emphasized the resounding victory of the incumbent government, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and highlighted the participation of over 640 million voters in a democratic process that reaffirmed public trust in the leadership.
Vaishnaw deemed Zuckerberg's claim that most incumbent governments, including India's, lost elections post-COVID as factually incorrect.
What Zuckerberg said?
In a podcast, Mark Zuckerberg claimed that the Covid pandemic led to a global breakdown in trust in governments, which contributed to the loss of incumbent governments in the 2024 elections, including in India. He said that while many see this as an issue in the US, it affects many countries worldwide.This statement came after Zuckerberg announced controversial changes to his platforms' content policies and the end of third-party fact-checking in the US.
Zuckerberg further added that the COVID pandemic, along with issues like inflation and economic policies to handle it, caused a global decrease in trust towards governments. He suggested that this decline in trust was not limited to the US but affected many countries and incumbents, possibly impacting democratic institutions as a whole.