Zuckerberg hails Modi for using social media to engage people

Zuckerberg said the use of social platforms created an opportunity for people to connect with their representatives at all levels.

New York, Feb 17: As India conducts assembly elections in five states, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has lauded Prime Minister Narendra Modi's style of working using the social networking platform to establish a meaningful dialogue between the people and the government.

Modi recently asked his ministers to share their meetings and information on Facebook so that they can receive direct feedback from citizens, the Facebook CEO wrote in a 5,700 words post on its 'Community Standard' Page.

Zuckerberg hailed the use of social media in election campaigning and gave the examples of countries like India, the US, Kenya and Indonesia where leaders were active on social platforms and connected well with the people.

"In recent campaigns around the world -- from India and Indonesia across Europe to the United States -- we've seen that the candidate with the largest and most engaged following on Facebook usually wins. Just as TV became the primary medium for civic communication in the 1960s, social media is becoming this in the 21st century," he wrote.

"We can help establish direct dialogue and accountability between people and our elected leaders," Zuckerberg added.

He said the use of social platforms created an opportunity for people to connect with their representatives at all levels.

"In the last few months, we have already helped our community double the number of connections between people and our representatives by making it easier to connect with all our representatives in one click," Zuckerberg noted.

At the same time, he said, Facebook wanted its users to define what is 'objectionable', eventually empowering them to decide how much nudity and violence they are comfortable seeing.

"The idea is to give everyone in the community options for how they would like to set the content policy for themselves," Zuckerberg wrote.

"Where is your line on nudity? On violence? On graphic content? On profanity? What you decide will be your personal settings. We will periodically ask you these questions to increase participation and so you don't need to dig around to find them," he asked.

The letter also noted that for those who do not make a decision, the policies decided by majority of people in their region would be enforced.

To classify the objectionable content, the Menlo Park-based company will use artificial intelligence and it wants to start with the cases in 2017.

IANS