Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Hails PM Narendra Modi For Connecting With Masses Via Facebook

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has applauded Prime Minister Narendra Modi's style of working, using the social networking platform extensively to establish a meaningful dialogue between the people and the government.

Mr Zuckerberg's praise comes at a crucial timing, when five states of India are conducting elections.

PM Modi recently asked his ministers to share their meetings and information on the Facebook so that they can receive direct feedback from citizens, the Facebook CEO wrote in a 5,700-word post on its "Community Standard" Page.

Mr Zuckerberg hailed the use of social media in election campaigning and gave examples of countries like India, the US, Kenya and Indonesia, where leaders were active on the social platforms and connected well with the people.

"In recent campaigns around the world, from India and Indonesia across Europe to the US, we've seen that the candidate with the largest and most engaged following on Facebook usually wins. Just as TV became the primary medium for civic communication in the 1960s, social media is becoming this in the 21st century," he wrote.

"We can help establish direct dialogue and accountability between people and our elected leaders," the Facebook CEO added.

He said the use of social platforms created an opportunity for people to connect with their representatives at all levels.

"In the past few months, we have already helped our community double the number of connections between people and our representatives by making it easier to connect with all our representatives in one click," Mr Zuckerberg noted.

At the same time, he said, Facebook wanted its users to define what is "objectionable", eventually empowering them to decide how much nudity and violence they are comfortable seeing.

"The idea is to give everyone in the community options for how they would like to set the content policy for themselves," Mr Zuckerberg wrote.

"Where is your line on nudity? On violence? On graphic content? On profanity? What you decide will be your personal settings. We will periodically ask you these questions to increase participation and so you don't need to dig around to find them," he asked.

The letter also noted that for those who do not make a decision, the policies decided by majority of people in their region would be enforced.