Meta Issues Apology After Mark Zuckerberg’s Controversial Remark On India’s 2024 Elections

Meta India issued an apology on Wednesday after a remark made by Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg sparked controversy regarding India’s 2024 general elections. The apology came following backlash from Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw and BJP lawmakers, who quickly pointed out that Zuckerberg’s comment was factually incorrect.

On a podcast with Joe Rogan on January 10, Zuckerberg claimed that in 2024, incumbent governments worldwide, including India, had been voted out of power due to the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic. He stated, “2024 was a very big election year around the world…The incumbents basically lost every single one. It seems to have had this effect that’s global.”

However, this statement drew immediate criticism from Indian politicians, including Minister Vaishnaw, who clarified that the claim was false. “The people of India reaffirmed their trust in the NDA led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in last year’s Lok Sabha election,” he wrote in a post on X . Vaishnaw emphasized that the 2024 elections in India saw the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi winning decisively, making Zuckerberg’s assertion about India’s electoral outcome completely inaccurate.

Meta Apologises

Shivanand Thukral, Vice President of Public Policy at Meta India, issued a public apology, stating, “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.” He further emphasized Meta’s commitment to India, calling it an “incredibly important country” for the company.

This apology came just a day after BJP MP Nishikant Dubey, who heads the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Communication and Information Technology, demanded Meta’s accountability for spreading misinformation. Dubey had stated that the company would be summoned by the committee over Zuckerberg’s erroneous remark. He called for Meta to apologize to the Parliament and the people of India for the misinformation.

“The organisation would have to apologise to the Parliament and the people here for this mistake,” Dubey asserted in a post on X.

In a re-tweet, MP Nishikant Dubey described Meta’s apology as “a victory of the common citizens” of India. He further emphasized that the Indian government’s leadership, under Prime Minister Modi, had been chosen by 1.4 billion people, and that the people’s trust in the government was unequivocally demonstrated in the 2024 elections.

However, despite the apology, Dubey stated that the parliamentary panel would continue to scrutinize social media platforms for other issues. “The House panel will summon Meta and other social platforms on other matters in the future,” he added.

The political realities in India were not taken into consideration by Zuckerberg’s remark, which seemed to compare India to other nations where incumbents lost power. The Indian voters reaffirmed their support for the leadership despite the obstacles faced by the pandemic, and Prime Minister Modi and the NDA coalition won a landslide win in the general elections of 2024, which were held just months after the pandemic’s height.

Zuckerberg’s claim was a component of a larger analysis in which he talked about how the COVID-19 pandemic affected elections and government around the world. However, he sparked a lot of criticism when he incorrectly mentioned India as one of the nations where incumbents were overthrown.

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