Facebook unable to stop hate speech in India: Reports

Ground Report | New Delhi: Facebook hate speech in India; Facebook is unable to stop misleading information, hate speech, and celebratory content in India, according to Facebook's internal documents. Facebook researchers have reported that the platform also has "groups and pages full of anti-Muslim and misleading content".

According to this report, "In February 2019, a Facebook researcher created an account to see what a social media website would look like for a person living in Kerala." "They worked on Facebook's algorithmic suggestions for just three weeks to join various groups, watch videos, and access new Facebook pages. The result was hate speech, misinformation and celebrating violence." There was an influx of material.

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Facebook hate speech in India

This information has been given in Facebook's internal document, which will be made public in the coming days. These documents are part of the collection of data engineer and whistleblower Francis Hogan. Frances Hogan is a former Facebook employee who recently testified before the US Senate about the company and its social media platform.

According to the report, internal documents also described how bots and fake accounts linked to "famous personalities of the country's ruling party and opposition" were influencing India's national elections.

Another Facebook report also talked about Bajrang Dal's attempts to make anti-Muslim statements on Facebook. The document states, “Facebook is considering designating Bajrang Dal as a dangerous organization because it is “inciting religious violence” on Facebook. However, Facebook has not done so yet.

The documents also detailed how a plan by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to focus on "meaningful social interactions" to "Champion" was causing more misinformation in India, especially during the pandemic.

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Another Facebook report detailed attempts by Bajrang Dal to publish posts containing anti-Muslim narratives on the platform. The document showed, “Facebook is considering designating the group as a dangerous organization because it is “inciting religious violence” on the platform. But it has not done so yet,” the New York Times reports. stated in.

Documents show that Facebook did not have sufficient resources in India and was not able to deal with the problems posed there, including anti-Muslim posts.

"This exploratory attempt at a hypothetical test account prompted a deeper, more rigorous analysis of our recommendation systems and contributed to product changes," a Facebook India spokesperson said. "Later product changes, more rigorous research included things like removing borderline material and civil and political groups from our recommendation systems."

India — Facebook's biggest market

India is Facebook's biggest market, with hundreds of millions of users, and files reported on Sunday show that the social media giant is aware of the problems created on its platform and the consequences of hate speech spreading so quickly.

This is not the first time Facebook has faced such allegations, with several critics and digital experts highlighting cases of misinformation being spread by supporters of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Is.

Modi has been accused of using the platform inappropriately for the benefit of his party, especially during elections. A Wall Street Journal report last year suggested that Facebook was selectively implementing its policies on hate speech to avoid backlash from the BJP.

Modi and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg are known to have a close relationship, especially since the pair were photographed hugging at Facebook headquarters in 2015.

bad actors, authoritarian regimes

“Facebook has carefully studied its approach abroad – and was well aware that weak moderation in non-English-speaking countries leaves a vulnerable platform for abuse by bad actors and authoritarian regimes,” the Post quoted internal documents as saying. Giving continued.

The documents revealed that the majority of the company's budget devoted to the fight against misinformation is for the United States -- even though users there represent less than 10 percent of Facebook's users worldwide.

"We have invested significantly in technology to find hate speech in a variety of languages, including Hindi and Bengali," a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement. "As a result, we have reduced the amount of hate speech people see by half this year. Today, it has dropped to 0.05 percent." This figure is the percentage of content in all countries.

The company said it was "expanding" its operations to new languages. It has "hate language classifiers" working in Hindi, Bengali, Tamil and Urdu.

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