Shashi Tharoor’s decision as head of the Parliamentary committee on IT to summon Facebook officials is a small but necessary step in the right direction. Let it not be the last
The decision of Facebook to ban BJP Member of Parliament T Raja Singh, coming as it does only after an international expose of how people in senior roles at the social media giants were actively collaborating to ensure the hate speech by members of the BJP continues unchecked, is too little, too late. The action does not inspire confidence that the social media giant which also owns WhatsApp and Instagram, is indeed serious about cracking down on its platforms being used to harass, target, abuse and threaten people based on their identity or political affiliation.
It may be recalled, the Wall Street Journal has in a series of articles exposed how Facebook India public policy head Ankhi Das asked the platform's moderators to go slow on banning or taking down hateful content on the social media site if the content was by the ruling BJP and its members. Das is reported to have told the platform’s moderators that punishing hate speech violations by politicians of the BJP would damage Facebook’s business prospects in the country.
As an example of the deliberate favouritism shown towards the BJP the Journal pointed out that T Raja Singh, a BJP MP from Telangana posted inflammatory content targeting Muslims calling them traitors, asking for them to be shot and saying mosques should be razed. Singh is no stranger to controversy and has 60 cases against him and regularly targets minorities both online and offline. Despite Facebook’s moderators wanting to ban him in the run up to the elections, the organization took no action until Thursday.
Gone are the days when social media was solely a tool used to help people connect with each other, meet up with long lost friends. Today Facebook is a fine-tuned propaganda machine that has helped demagogues across the world rise to power allowing political parties to target users and voters with ads and content that would stoke their deepest fears, fake news and questionable claims unchallenged.
In fact, the algorithms of social media sites and not just Facebook are tuned to keep users hooked onto the site for as long as possible and nothing keeps people engaged like content that sparks outrage, causes shockor elicits an interaction with the post. Social media has been exploiting this. Legal regimes across the world have been slow to react to the threats posed by social media. An inquiry into Facebook’s role into the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar found that the platform had almost no moderators who could understand Burmese to regulate content that was inciting the Burmese majority against the Rohingya. In India, its role is far worse because the decision to permit hateful content has been deliberate.
All mass media has some form for regulation. Editors are responsible and can be hauled before magistrates and courts if their publications or channels are posting derogatory, defamatory or hateful content, even if the said content among those expressed by independent contributors. No such mechanism is in place for social media and the legal framework is sketchy. The platforms do not wish to hire too many human moderators and instead try and develop algorithms because employing humans eats into their gigantic profits. All this while people face vile abuse, threats, reputations tarnished and the platforms claim little to no responsibility for what they claim is user generated content.
Better late than never, it’s high time something is done about this. Shashi Tharoor’s decision as head of the Parliamentary committee on IT to summon Facebook officials is a small but necessary step in the right direction. Let it not be the last.
