Facebook ignored its hate speech policies and banned anti-Muslim posts on its platform to destroy the social media company’s relationship with India’s ruling party, a Wall Street Journal report said.
The WSJ report published on Friday said that a top Facebook executor in India refused to apply the rules of the company’s hate speech to Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) politicians and other “Hindu nationalist individuals and groups”.
“The top management of the company in the country, Ankhi Das, opposes the application of the hate speech rules on [T Raja] Singh and at least three other Hindu nationalist individuals and groups have been flagged internally for promoting or participating in violence, ‘it said, according to current and former Facebook staff.
Singh, the only BJP legislator in the southern state of Telangana, is known for his anti-Muslim rhetoric. The WSJ said the right-wing politician had demanded that mainly Muslim Rohingya refugees be shot, called the betrayal of Muslims in India and threatened to demolish mosques in his Facebook posts and public speeches.
In March this year, the report said, Facebook staff responsible for policing the platform found that Singh had violated her hate speech rules and suggested banning his account.
But Das refused to take action against Singh, who has tens of thousands of followers on Facebook and the company owned by Instagram, he added.
“Das, whose job also lobbies the government of India on behalf of Facebook, told staff members that it was clearing up violations by politicians of [Indian Prime Minister Narendra] Modi’s party would jeopardize the company’s business prospects, “the report said, with unnamed current and former employees.
In this September 27, 2015 photo, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi crawls into Menlo Park, California [File: Jeff Chiu/AP]
Facebook spokesman Andy Stone “acknowledged that Das had raised concerns about the political fallout that would result from designating Singh as a dangerous individual,” according to the WSJ report.
It said the company removed some of Singh’s hate mail after the newspaper asked questions, removed the blue tick that signified a verified account and “was still considered a ban justified”.
The report also mentioned at least two other BJP leaders, whose upcoming messages were expected to be deleted from the platform after the American newspaper approached them for a response.
In his Facebook posts, Anantkumar Hegde, a BJP member of parliament, had claimed that Muslims were spreading coronavirus in the country as part of a conspiracy called “Corona Jihad”.
In March, as the virus began to spread across India, a major right-wing campaign by the BJP and sections of the media accused a Muslim missionary movement called Tablighi Jamaat of spreading COVID-19. Dozens of Jamaat leaders were arrested.
A month earlier, a video had appeared with former BJP legislator Kapil Mishra, in which he could be seen warning police in New Delhi capital to remove protesters protesting against a controversial civil law passed by the Indian last December parliament has been adopted.
The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) makes it easier for non-Muslims from three neighboring countries – Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan – to gain Indian citizenship.
Muslims fear that the CAA, along with a planned national citizenship registry, is targeting disenfranchising of them. The United Nations has called the law “fundamentally discriminatory” against Muslims and other minorities.
Within hours of Mishra’s video going viral on social media, religious violence erupted in New Delhi, in which 53 people, most of them Muslims, were killed.
The WSJ said the three-day uprising in the national capital in February was also organized via WhatsApp ownership of Facebook, according to court documents submitted by police and published in Indian newspapers.
“[Facebook’s Mark] Zuckerberg had cited Mishra’s post, without naming him, at a town hall meeting in June, as an example of the kind of behavior that the platform would not tolerate from a politician, “the report said, adding that the company removed the video .
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