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By Aditya Kalra and Nigam Prusty
NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Facebook is a nonpartisan platform that denounces hatred and intolerance, the company’s Indian leader said Friday amid a controversy over how American social media regulates the political content of its largest market in terms of users.
Facebook and its lobbying leader in India, Ankhi Das, have been criticized after a report said they opposed the application of hate speech regulations to some Americans and Hindu nationalist groups, as well as a member of India’s ruling party who had called Muslim traitors on Facebook. . Posts.
“Decisions related to content escalation are not made unilaterally through a userArray … the procedure comes with strong checks and counterweights,” Ajit Mohan, Facebook’s head in India, wrote in an online article titled “We are open, transparent and not -party.”
Reuters reported this week that some Facebook workers in the U.S. And beyond they had raised questions in internal forums about whether the Indian team was following content regulatory practices.
In an internal open letter to Facebook management, 11 workers demanded that business leaders recognize and denounce “anti-Muslim sectarianism” and ensure greater political coherence. One source said there’s an internal discussion on Facebook about content moderation processes.
The controversy was sparked through a recent Wall Street Journal report in which Das told staff that enforcing hate speech regulations against politicians close to India’s ruling party would “harm the company’s commercial customers in the country.”
“We take accusations of incredible bias very seriously and, to make it transparent, denounce hatred and intolerance in all its forms,” Mohan said in the message.
“We have disposed of ourselves and will continue to remove content posted through public figures in India when it violates our network standards.”
Facebook has struggled with the political consequences in India in recent days. The opposition Congress Party has criticized Facebook for its policies, while some lawmakers in the ruling have accused it of censoring nationalist voices.
INDIA PANEL, SUPERVISORY BOARD
An Indian parliamentary panel on data generation will feature Facebook executives on how it regulates content in the country, one panel member told Reuters on Friday.
Facebook called for a 2 September call and the discussion with Facebook will last 30 minutes.
“The issue is serious because of Facebook’s wide reach in IndiaArray … and hate speech to incite violence and other illegal behavior,” said the panel member, who declined to be identified.
Facebook, which has more than three hundred million users in India, its largest market, did not respond to a request for comment on its call through the panel.
Facebook has been criticized for high-level content moderation issues.
Its soon-to-be-operational content control body, which some have dubbed the company’s “Supreme Court,” has said it is committed to protecting users.
“The way Facebook handles posts from public figures that would possibly violate the network criteria is a matter of the board of directors,” the board told Reuters in a statement.
“We will not do misleading cases and hold Facebook accountable,” said the board, which has the strength to reverse decisions through corporate executive and JEFE Mark Zuckerberg on whether to allow individual content.
Two members of the Supervisory Board told Reuters, on condition of anonymity, that they had not been informed of recent unrest in India. One of them stated that hate speech against Muslims is a factor in which counsel is found more generally.
Facebook was handling the matter internally at the moment, but it was conceivable that the India factor would become one of the instances that would be considered through the Board of Directors when it starts operating in October, the member said at the time.
(Aditya Kalra’s reports in New Delhi; Additional report through Elizabeth Culliford in London; Edited by Euan Rocha, Robert Birsel and Nick Macfie)