Reports earlier this year said Ankhi Das had refused to remove anti-Muslim posts on the social media platform, sparking a political storm.
Facebook’s top public policy executive in India, who was at the center of a controversy over her alleged lack of response to hate speech on the platform, has resigned, the social media giant said on Tuesday.
The network unleashed a political storm in India after the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported in August that policy chief Ankhi Das refused to remove the anti-Muslim posts of a Hindu nationalist lawmaker as it could harm interests. business of the company.
The legislator of the southern state of Telangana, T Raja Singh, belongs to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
In his Facebook posts, Singh demanded that Rohingya refugees be shot, called Muslims in India traitors and threatened to demolish mosques.
Facebook blocked it following the publication of the WSJ report, which also detailed other BJP politicians and Hindu nationalist groups publishing hate speech against Muslims.
India is the largest market for the US-based firm, with more than 300 million users. Its messaging app, WhatsApp, has 400 million users in the world’s second most populous nation.
However, the social media company is under pressure around the world for surveillance of hate speech.
An Indian parliamentary committee on information technology is also investigating the allegations.
Ajit Mohan, managing director of Facebook India, said Das would leave Facebook “to pursue his interest in public service.”
“Ankhi was one of our first employees in India and has played a critical role in the growth of the company and its services over the past nine years,” Mohan said in a statement.
Time reports that Ankhi Das has been replaced, temporarily, by Shivnath Thukral.
Thukral served on behalf of the BJP in the 2014 elections.
– Abhishek Baxi (@baxiabhishek) October 27, 2020
In September, Mohan rejected allegations that the Silicon Valley firm failed to act on hate speech out of business concerns, telling the Times of India newspaper that the company was doing everything it could to “keep all manner of harm away from the platform”.
He said Das was not responsible for any decisions governing hate speech and that the public policy team was separate from the content policy team that enforces those decisions.
More than 40 rights groups around the world had written a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in September demanding that Das be sidelined, pending the outcome of a civil rights audit.
Indian media reports said Das left Facebook days after Indian MPs questioned her about data privacy.
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