Ankhi Das quits as Facebook's India public policy head

• Facebook’s India public policy head Ankhi Das has quit the social networking behemoth.
• Her resignation comes within days of being questioned by a parliamentary panel on data privacy.
• According to Ajit Mohan, the managing director for Facebook in India, Das has stepped down to pursue her interest in public service.

Ankhi Das, Facebook's head of public policy who was in the eye of storm over alleged bias in blocking hate content on the social media platform, has quit the social networking giant.

"I have decided to step down from facebook after long service to its mission of connecting people and building communities to pursue my personal interest in public service,” she said in her farewell statement.

Her resignation comes within days of Facebook being called before a parliamentary panel to discuss issues of data privacy. Source told NDTV that Das was questioned for nearly two hours on Monday, October 23.

Twitter and Amazon are set to appear before the same committee on October 28.

Das had also earlier been called before the government once before, by the Parliamentary Panel of Information Technology headed by Congress Member of Parliament (MP) Shashi Tharoor.

Ankhi Das — at the eye of the storm
Facebook and other social networking sites have come under scrutiny after Wall Street Journal and TIME magazine articles claimed that the social network was not uniform in its application of hate speech rules.

Even though some extremist posts were taken down, others — especially those by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders — were left to circulate far and wide.

"These posts are taken out of context and don't represent the full scope of Facebook's efforts to support the use of our platform by parties across the political spectrum," the company’s spokesperson said at the time.

Ankhi Das exits Facebook
Das joined Facebook nine years ago. According to her, the team was small and the mission was to connect people in India at the time. “After nine long years, I feel that mission has largely been met,” she said.

Ajit Mohan, the managing director for Facebook in India, commended Das on the instrumental role she played in the company since 2011. "Ankhi has decided to step down from her role in Facebook to pursue her interest in public service," he said.

He too has been under fire for Facebook’s practices in the country. Delhi’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in particular has been breathing down his neck for being ‘complicit’ in the violence that broke out during the protests against India’s Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in February.

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