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What Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Wants You To Learn From Prime Minister Narendra Modi

Hint: Social media skills.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (L) and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg pose for the crowd after a town hall at Facebook's headquarters in Menlo Park, California.
Stephen Lam / Reuters
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (L) and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg pose for the crowd after a town hall at Facebook's headquarters in Menlo Park, California.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO, is a fan of our Prime Minister Narendra Modi. At least, when it comes to 'community building'. In a long, 6,500-word post detailing his plans to "bring humanity together", he talks about a lot of things. And among those many things, Modi finds a brief mention.

Citing the example of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government, Zuckerberg explained how social networks can help establish governments of various countries connect with people. "We can help establish direct dialogue and accountability between people and our elected leaders," he wrote.

"In India, Prime Minister Modi has asked his ministers to share their meetings and information on Facebook so they can hear direct feedback from citizens," Zuckerberg wrote, explaining why this activity helps people connect more with the government.

"Beyond voting, the greatest opportunity is helping people stay engaged with the issues that matter to them every day, not just every few years at the ballot box. We can help establish direct dialogue and accountability between people and our elected leaders," he wrote.

Zuckerberg also gave the example of Kenya, where apparently entire villages are on WhatsApp groups so that they remain in touch with each other, all the time.

"In recent campaigns around the world -- from India and Indonesia across Europe to the United States -- we've seen the candidate with the largest and most engaged following on Facebook usually wins," Zuckerberg wrote, highlighting a phenomenon that India knows all too well.

In the entire post, Zuckerberg didn't mention Donald Trump even once. However, 'fake news' did find a mention in his post.

"The two most discussed concerns this past year were about diversity of viewpoints we see (filter bubbles) and accuracy of information (fake news). I worry about these and we have studied them extensively, but I also worry there are even more powerful effects we must mitigate around sensationalism and polarization leading to a loss of common understanding," he wrote.

Read his entire FB post here:

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This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost India, which closed in 2020. Some features are no longer enabled. If you have questions or concerns about this article, please contact indiasupport@huffpost.com.