‘Disappointing to see...’: Ashwini Vaishnaw corrects Mark Zuckerberg on 2024 Lok Sabha results claim

Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw refuted Mark Zuckerberg’s claim that India’s ruling party lost all major elections, calling it “disappointing to see” the billionaire spreading misinformation. 

Zuckerberg had suggested that most incumbent governments, including India, were defeated in elections held after the COVID-19 pandemic. In response, Vaishnaw labelled these assertions as “factually incorrect”. 

In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Vaishnaw wrote, “As the world’s largest democracy, India conducted the 2024 elections with over 640 million voters. The people of India reaffirmed their trust in the NDA led by PM @narendramodi Ji’s leadership. Mr. Zuckerberg’s claim that most incumbent governments, including India in 2024 elections, lost post-COVID is factually incorrect.” 

During a recent podcast with Joe Rogan, Zuckerberg had remarked, “2024 was a big election year around the world. All these countries, like India, had elections. The incumbents basically lost every single one. There is some sort of a global phenomenon – whether it was because of inflation or the economic policies to deal with Covid or just how the governments dealt with Covid - seems to have had this global effect...There was a broad decrease in trust in incumbents and maybe in these sorts of democratic institutions overall.” 

Praising the Modi government’s handling of the pandemic, Vaishnaw urged the tech mogul to maintain accuracy and credibility. 

“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,” Vaishnaw wrote. He also added, “@Meta, it’s disappointing to see misinformation from Mr. Zuckerberg himself. Let’s uphold facts and credibility.” 

Zuckerberg recently announced that Meta would be ending its partnership with third-party fact-checkers in the US, opting instead to let ordinary users debunk false claims via a model called “Community Notes,” a system popularized by X.