Facebook denounced hate and bigotry on its platform and acknowledged it has “to do more,” while maintaining that it has been an open, transparent and non-partisan site for people to express themselves freely.
“We’ve made progress in tackling hate speech on our platform, but we need to do more,” Ajit Mohan, managing director of Facebook India, wrote in a blogpost.
Mohan said Facebook reported its latest enforcement numbers last week and had taken down 22.5 million pieces of hate speech content in the second quarter of 2020, up from 1.6 million removed in the last quarter of 2017.
“Over the last few days, we have been accused of bias in the way we enforce our policies. We take allegations of bias incredibly seriously, and want to make it clear that we denounce hate and bigotry in any form,” Mohan wrote. He was referring to allegations of favouring the BJP government in the country.
‘Will Engage with Political Parties’
He said the company will engage with political parties in India on its content moderation policies.
“Facebook’s commitment to India and its people is unwavering. With some of our largest thriving communities in this country, we recognise our responsibility to keep our platforms to be places where people feel empowered to communicate safely,” Mohan wrote. “Our aim is to be an ally for India where our platforms preserve the pluralistic character of a democracy by offering the freedom for people to express themselves and for entrepreneurs to build new things while also protecting society from broader harm.”
Read: Inside Facebook’s early days of lobbying in India, led by Ankhi Das
India is one of the largest user bases for Facebook, with over 346 million users, according to Statista.
“First and foremost, we want to make it clear that we denounce hate in any form. Our Community Standards, which outline what is and isn’t allowed on Facebook, have clear and very detailed policies against hate speech, which prohibit attacks on people on the basis of protected characteristics, including religion, ethnicity, caste and national origin,” wrote Mohan.
The platform claimed that its community standards, which are developed through both internal and external voices, are enforced globally.
“These policies are ever evolving to take into account the local sensitivities, especially in a multicultural society such as India. An example is the inclusion of caste as a protected characteristic in our global hate speech policy in 2018,” Mohan said.
Facebook claimed that it has an impartial approach towards hate speech and enforces policies globally without regard to anyone’s political position, party affiliation or religious and cultural belief.
“We have removed and will continue to remove content posted by public figures in India when it violates our Community Standards,” Mohan said.
Read: Hate speech row: Facebook oversight board will investigate political ‘bias’ cases
The world’s biggest social network has been under attack in India over policies that allegedly favoured the BJP government. Last week, The Wall Street Journal, citing current and former Facebook employees, alleged that Ankhi Das, Facebook’s public policy director for India, South and Central Asia, opposed applying hate speech rules to posts by BJP leader T Raja Singh and three other BJP leaders and groups flagged internally for promoting violence.
Since then, there has been a war of words between the opposition Congress party and the BJP. The Parliamentary Panel on Information Technology has called Facebook officials to depose before it on September 2 over safeguarding citizens’ rights and misuse of social media platforms. The WSJ report said Facebook removed the hate content by the BJP legislator after it flagged the posts to the social media company.
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