While Amazon refused to appear before an Indian parliamentary panel for a scheduled meeting on Friday, Facebook's public policy head (India, South and Central Asia) Ankhi Das was grilled for two hours on the issue of data security by the panel.
Representatives from the social media giant Facebook were told they cannot use the personal data of users for the purpose of advertising or business or elections by drawing inferences from statistics, Indian daily Times of India quoted sources as saying.
The Facebook representatives reportedly had a tough time answering the question and were also asked about revenue generation and how much taxes the company pays.
Das is in the midst of a political storm for allegedly favouring India’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and her role during the 2014 parliamentary elections by purportedly bending the hate speech rules of the social media site.
The controversy started when a Wall Street Journal report cited Facebook insiders claiming that Das had intervened in its internal content review process to stop a ban on BJP members who made posts targeting Muslims.
Twitter and Amazon are scheduled to appear before the committee on 28 October. However, Amazon refused to attend the meet, saying that "its experts are overseas".