Thu 10 September 2020:
Civil rights groups on Wednesday said Facebook had failed to address dangerous content in India and demanded the removal of the head of public policy for the country.
A letter to Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg and his second-in-command Sheryl Sandberg wanted India’s political chief social network Ankhi Das to be sidelined pending the results of a civil rights check.
“Facebook should not be complicit in more offline violence, much less in another genocide, but the pattern of inaction displayed by the company is reckless to the point of collaboration,” the letter said.
“It is no secret, given the accepted and harsh reality of Facebook’s role in the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar, that online violence and hatred easily spill over into violence in real life.”
The letter was signed by more than 40 groups including the Southern Poverty Law Center, Witnesses, Muslim Lawyers and the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism.
This comes in the wake of controversy over anti-Muslim remarks posted on the page of a member of the ruling party that were not initially removed.
“The full extent of the damage done by Facebook India has not yet been determined, but even what we know now highlights the urgent and serious nature of these claims,” the letter reads.
Facebook has admitted in the past that it needs to do more to fight hate speech in India. The social network did not immediately respond to a request from VET for comment.
Facebook last week banned an outspoken Indian right-wing politician for spreading hate speech against Muslims as the social media giant struggled with allegations of prejudice over the treatment of rival parties in the main market.
T Raja Singh, a regional lawmaker for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling party, was blocked “for violating our policy of banning those who promote or include violence and hatred from having a presence on our platform,” a Facebook spokesman at the time said. .
Raja made headlines for the news that Rohingya Muslim refugees from Myanmar are said to be shot.
Facebook has been caught amid allegations of prejudice by rival parties in the field of political battle fever in India. India is the US firm’s largest market in terms of number of users.
Opposition parties said they favored BJP after the Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook’s Ankhi Das refused to receive anti-Muslim comments from Raja Singh because it could harm the company’s business interests.
Social media giant Facebook acknowledged last month that it should do better to curb hate speech as it battled a storm over how it handled comments from a member of India’s ruling party who called Muslims traitors.
“We have made progress in tackling hate speech on our platform, but we need to do more,” Facebook India managing director Ajit Mohan said in a statement that denied any prejudice.
