Meta, the parent company of Facebook, issued an apology on Wednesday after its CEO Mark Zuckerberg made a controversial remark about India’s 2024 elections. This comes after Zuckerber, in a recent interview, suggested that the incumbent government lost the election due to its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Meta India's Vice President, Shivnath Thukral, made the apology in response to Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw's post on X, which had called Zuckerberg's statement "factually incorrect," while his party's MP Nishikant Dubey said a parliamentary panel will summon Meta over the comments.
"Mark's observation that many incumbent parties were not re-elected in 2024 elections holds true for several countries, BUT not India. We would like to apologise for this inadvertent error. India remains an incredibly important country for Meta and we look forward to being at the heart of its innovative future," Thukral wrote in response to Vaishnaw's post.
After the apology by Meta India, Dubey, who heads the Parliament's Standing Committee on Communications and Information Technology, said he treated the matter as "closed."
"A Meta India official has finally apologised for the mistake. This is a victory of the common citizens of India," Dubey said in a post on X.
Appearing on the Joe Rogan podcast, Zuckerberg had said that in elections around the world in 2024, most incumbent governments, including the one in India, had been voted out of power.
"There is some sort of global phenomena, whether it was inflation because of the economic policies to deal with COVID or just how the governments dealt with COVID, seems to have this effect that is global, not just the US, but like a very broad decrease in trust, at least in the set incumbents and maybe, in sort of these democratic institutions overall," he had said.
Minister for Information & Broadcasting, Electronics & Information Technology Vaishnaw had called out Zuckerberg for making misleading statements about India where Prime Minister Narendra Modi had won a consecutive third term.
"Mr Zuckerberg's claim that most incumbent governments, including India, in 2024 elections, lost post-COVID is factually incorrect," Vaishnaw had said in a post on X on January 13.
"As the world's largest democracy, India conducted the 2024 elections with over 640 million voters. People of India reaffirmed their trust in the NDA led by PM Narendra Modi Ji's leadership," he added.
Vaishnaw had expressed disappointment at Zuckerberg's remarks and debunked the statement by the Meta honcho as "misinformation."
"From free food for 800 million, 2.2 billion free vaccines, and aid to nations worldwide during COVID, to leading India as the fastest-growing major economy, PM Modi's decisive 3rd-term victory is a testament to good governance and public trust. Meta, it's disappointing to see misinformation from Mr Zuckerberg himself. Let's uphold facts and credibility," the union minister had said.