Facebook Grapples With Hate Speech & 'Celebrations Of Violence' In India: Report

The American tech giant has come under scanner as the documents released by whistleblower Frances Haugen reveal that company has done little to deal with the hate speech and misinformation in India.

Facebook under fire as it deals with hate speech and misinformation | File Image

New Delhi: The American tech giant, Facebook, has come under scanner as the documents released by a former Facebook employee and whistleblower Frances Haugen reveal that the company has "done little to deal with the hate speech and misinformation in India".

How Did It All Start

In February 2019, an employee from the India staff created a test account to see how the experience would be for a young user on the social media platform. The next step was to follow all the recommendations generated by Facebook to join groups and watch videos.

The result was a myriad of hate speech and misinformation which was published in a report called The Facebook Papers.

“Following this test user’s News Feed, I’ve seen more images of dead people in the past three weeks than I’ve seen in my entire life total,” said the researcher.

The Facebook Papers

The report published now is a part of a bigger cache material named The Facebook Papers which have also been submitted by Haugen to the Securities and Exchange Commission. 

The report shows that “Facebook did not have enough resources in India and was unable to grapple with the problems it had introduced there, including anti-Muslim posts.” 

The documents reveal that 87 percent of the time budgeted for classifying misinformation is allotted to the US and only 13 percent is for the rest of the world, reported The New York Times.

This comes at the revelation that the US only constitutes 10 percent of the daily active users, and India is the largest market for the giant with 340 million users.

The documents also reveal that Facebook’s problems across the globe have amplified in the Indian subcontinent because of a lack of resources and expertise in the country’s 22 official languages.

It also shows how the social media platform has to deal with the “ bots and fake accounts tied to the country’s ruling party and opposition figures were wreaking havoc on national elections.”

What Does Facebook Say About It?

While the report says that Facebook has invested disproportionately in preventing hate speech and misinformation, the tech giant has stated that the experiment has led to deeper analysis and better understanding. 

“This exploratory effort of one hypothetical test account inspired deeper, more rigorous analysis of our recommendation systems, and contributed to product changes to improve them,” said a Facebook India Spokesperson.

“We’ve invested significantly in technology to find hate speech in various languages, including Hindi and Bengali. As a result, we’ve reduced the amount of hate speech that people see by half this year. Today, it’s down to 0.05%. Hate speech against marginalized groups, including Muslims, is on the rise globally. So we are improving enforcement and are committed to updating our policies as hate speech evolves online,” the spokesperson added.

Another spokesperson Andy Stone said, “the figures were incomplete and don’t include the company’s third-party fact-checking partners, most of whom are outside the United States,” reported the New York Times.

Stone added “Hate speech against marginalized groups, including Muslims, is on the rise in India and globally. So we are improving enforcement and are committed to updating our policies as hate speech evolves online.”

While India is not the only country to bear the brunt of lack of resources as Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Ethiopia have also faced India-like problems.

Katie Harbath, who has worked at Facebook for 10 years as director of public policy, and worked for securing India’s national elections says, “there is definitely a question about resourcing” for Facebook, but the answer is not “just throwing more money at the problem.”