“It’s high time Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook take anti-Muslim hatred seriously and change how its policies are applied in Asia and across the world,” Heidi Beirich, government vp for technique on the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, one of many signatories of the letter, mentioned in an announcement. “The scandal in the Indian office, where anti-Muslim and other forms of hatred were allowed to stay online due to religious and political bias, is appalling and the leadership in that office complicit.”
Facebook didn’t reply to a request for remark.
One of Facebook’s strongest executives, Das got here below scrutiny after the Wall Street Journal confirmed that she had intervened to guard T. Raja Singh, a state-level BJP politician, and not less than three different Hindu nationalists, from Facebook’s hate speech guidelines, saying that doing so can be unhealthy for enterprise. She additionally claimed that the corporate “lit a fire” to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s social media marketing campaign earlier than he received elections in 2014.
Last month, Das apologized to Facebook staff for sharing a submit on her private Facebook web page that known as India’s Muslims a “degenerate community” for whom “nothing except purity of religion and implementation of Shariah matter.”
The reviews have sparked a political controversy in India, Facebook’s largest market, which has greater than 300 million customers. Last week, greater than a dozen members of a parliamentary committee grilled Ajit Mohan, Facebook’s prime government in India, about its content material moderation insurance policies. A separate authorities panel can be investigating whether or not hate speech on Facebook sparked riots in New Delhi earlier this 12 months, the place greater than 50 folks — largely Muslims — have been killed.
This isn’t the primary time that Facebook has come below scrutiny for not taking down content material that instigates violence. Earlier this month, BuzzFeed News reported that Facebook did not take down an occasion created by the Kenosha Guard, a self-proclaimed militia, the place members mentioned plans to “kill looters and rioters” regardless of being flagged 455 occasions. The web page requested followers to deliver weapons to an occasion meant to counterprotests towards the police capturing of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin. A 17-year-old on the protest allegedly shot and killed two protesters.
In Myanmar, Facebook was used to unfold anti-Muslim hate speech, together with requires violence towards the minority Rohingya group. In 2018, Facebook acknowledged that it was used to “foment division and incite offline violence” in Myanmar after troopers within the nation massacred 1000’s of Rohingya folks and compelled greater than 800,000 folks to flee into Bangladesh. The United Nations described it as genocide.
“Moderation bias in Facebook’s Delhi office affects many South Asian markets, including hundreds of millions of users across India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Bangladesh,” mentioned Dia Kayyali, program supervisor for tech and advocacy at Witness, a Brooklyn-based human proper nonprofit group and one of many letter’s signatories, advised BuzzFeed News.
Kayyali mentioned that though human rights organizations from India and South Asia have weighed in on the letter, issues about backlash from India’s more and more authoritarian authorities stored them from signing it. “Given the declining rights situations across the region, many organizations felt unsafe in engaging in any public advocacy at this time, especially given the existence of warning signs of genocide,” they mentioned.
“I don’t know what the damn problem is at Facebook with anti-Muslim hate,” mentioned Beirich, who mentioned she had repeatedly introduced the subject up with Facebook executives, together with the corporate’s chief working officer, Sheryl Sandberg. “But I would just say at this point that they don’t seem to care. The needle doesn’t move.”
