By Nolina Minj
In the months leading up to the Jharkhand assembly election, advertisers have spent at least Rs 2.25 crore on political promotions on the Meta-owned platforms Facebook and Instagram, targeting users in the state.
The state will go to the polls in two phases, on November 13 and November 20.
Thirty-six percent of this amount was spent on advertising by third-party “shadow accounts” that promoted the Bharatiya Janata Party and included communally divisive messages, research by a group of civil-society bodies has found. Among these posts were ones that showed Muslim men as rapists and criminals, and depicted Chief Minister Hemant Soren with horns and as an insect.
The report based on this research notes that such advertisements are in violation of Meta’s policies, which prohibits ads that attack individuals on the basis of “protected characteristics” such as race, ethnicity, religious affiliation and caste.
“While the official page of BJP Jharkhand is using political ads to highlight issues related to government programs and electoral promises, the network of shadow accounts are engaged in posting communally divisive content and attack ads,” the report says.
This story was originally published in scroll.in. Read the full story here.
