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Facebook’s ties to India’s ruling party complicate its fight against hate speech

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Re: Facebook’s ties to India’s ruling party complicate its fight against hate speech

#61

Post by ra7 »

Barrin92 wrote: post #6
roenxi wrote: post #2

It is a strategically risky move for Facebook to take an active role in shaping India's political landscape. I imagine that the Indian population might object to American companies deciding what is and isn't appropriate to discuss.

Inciting ethnic violence was one of the official reasons why TikTok was banned in the country, so surely nobody can object to applying the same Indian standards to Facebook communication, right? Not to mention India already has hate speech laws, so I don't see how Facebook enforcing them on their platform would be anyhting else than complying with... Indian law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_laws_in_India

> Inciting ethnic violence was one of the official reasons why TikTok was banned in the country

Source? Tiktok ban was a geopolitical play due to recent India-China tensions and the reason given was "national security". Here's the official press release: https://pib.gov.in/PressReleseDetailm.aspx?PRID=1635206

Re: Facebook’s ties to India’s ruling party complicate its fight against hate speech

#62

Post by eklavya »

dragonsh wrote: post #27

For failure of legislation, judiciary, administration, media in India to protect minority, Facebook is not the primary actor. Indeed minorities failed to get support from top courts in India where habeas corpus (the most fundamental basic right of Freedom in Indian constitution) litigations are pending for over 1 year and constantly being postponed, and the topmost court is busy prosecuting a lawyer with urgency for…

[flagged]

Re: Facebook’s ties to India’s ruling party complicate its fight against hate speech

#63

Post by saagarjha »

Barrin92 wrote: post #6
roenxi wrote: post #2

It is a strategically risky move for Facebook to take an active role in shaping India's political landscape. I imagine that the Indian population might object to American companies deciding what is and isn't appropriate to discuss.

Inciting ethnic violence was one of the official reasons why TikTok was banned in the country, so surely nobody can object to applying the same Indian standards to Facebook communication, right? Not to mention India already has hate speech laws, so I don't see how Facebook enforcing them on their platform would be anyhting else than complying with... Indian law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_laws_in_India

People incite ethnic violence regardless of the platform they use to spread their message. Hate speech laws in India just seem to be a convenient way for the government to crack down on websites and services it doesn’t like at arbitrary times.

Re: Facebook’s ties to India’s ruling party complicate its fight against hate speech

#64

Post by throwawaysea »

ashleshbiradar wrote: post #33
zozbot234 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Islam' is not a monolithic block, and we shouldn't represent it as such. Most hate speech against Muslims or varieties of Islam comes from Islamist fundamentalists and radicals themselves, not anyone with ties to any "ruling party" in India or in the Western world.

Talking about Islamophobic hate content in the context of India, the current ruling party BJP which known for being a Hindu Nationalistic party, along with it's sister organizations "Sangh Parivar", have a history of spreading islamophobia.

You can’t accuse them of Islamophobia or hate content when there’s a long history of Islamic terror attacks in India, attempts to illegally annex territory from India into an Islamic nation (Pakistan trying to claim Kashmir), recent history in splitting India to create separate Islamic nations (Pakistan and Bangladesh), not to mention further brutal history of Islamic (Mughal) conquest and rule.

Why shouldn’t a party in India be Hindu nationalists and recognize the realities of Islam’s persistent threat to their way of life over hundreds of years? There’s no other space on the planet for Hindus other than India. Blind secularism is asking for a culture to disappear and be replaced by the homogeneous modern western culture, ultimately.

Re: Facebook’s ties to India’s ruling party complicate its fight against hate speech

#65

Post by ashleshbiradar »

throwawaysea wrote: post #64
ashleshbiradar wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talking about Islamophobic hate content in the context of India, the current ruling party BJP which known for being a Hindu Nationalistic party, along with it's sister organizations "Sangh Parivar", have a history of spreading islamophobia.

You can’t accuse them of Islamophobia or hate content when there’s a long history of Islamic terror attacks in India, attempts to illegally annex territory from India into an Islamic nation (Pakistan trying to claim Kashmir), recent history in splitting India to create separate Islamic nations (Pakistan and Bangladesh), not to mention further brutal history of Islamic (Mughal) conquest and rule. Why shouldn’t a party…

threat of terrorism doesnt justify hating the entire community, the policy of the current ruling dispensation is Islamophobic, Islamophobia wont help fight terrorism.

Re: Facebook’s ties to India’s ruling party complicate its fight against hate speech

#66

Post by newen »

ffpip wrote: post #40
newen wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard to take this comment seriously in a country where about 50% have access to the internet, very likely 100% of influential people have access to the internet, and very likely 100% of people are 1 degree of separation from someone who has access to the internet.

They don't take it seriously. Just the fact that everybody is online doesn't mean they know how to navigate the internet. Many are there for porn, or shitty memes

It’s not that different from any other country. Only a small fraction of people from any country cares about what’s actually going on in the intersection of politics and the internet.

Re: Facebook’s ties to India’s ruling party complicate its fight against hate speech

#67

Post by actuator »

roenxi wrote: post #2

It is a strategically risky move for Facebook to take an active role in shaping India's political landscape. I imagine that the Indian population might object to American companies deciding what is and isn't appropriate to discuss.

FB's motivation at the end of day is money, they will cater to demands of any ruling org. For long time Zuck was doing trips to PRC to cozy up to CCP.

I went through the article and while I don't rule out the possibility of ideological bias in an org, it seems that they are reaching for it a bit. Like the first instance itself that was mentioned in the article.

> Facebook said in a statement to TIME. “We failed to remove upon initial review, which was a mistake on our part.”

I am not a FB employee but if they have a two step process for removing some posts and say the second step in some cases is creating an issue on the ticketing system. By Occam's razor the simplest explanation can be easily that what FB is saying is the truth, in mid/big companies, issue trackers can easily be the places where things can go to die.

I have personally seen issues being left unaddressed for years. It can happen, and if we pick selective instances to paint a story, it might not be the complete picture.

Though as I mentioned earlier as well, they very well can have a bias if they have hired individuals with the same ideological background which is true for all types of orgs including old media houses.

Re: Facebook’s ties to India’s ruling party complicate its fight against hate speech

#68

Post by dheera »

roenxi wrote: post #2

It is a strategically risky move for Facebook to take an active role in shaping India's political landscape. I imagine that the Indian population might object to American companies deciding what is and isn't appropriate to discuss.

I've always wondered why Facebook's role in the US elections is such a hotly debated topic but Facebook's role in the elections of all the other democracies in the world is not touched upon at all.

Re: Facebook’s ties to India’s ruling party complicate its fight against hate speech

#69

Post by throwawaysea »

ashleshbiradar wrote: post #65
throwawaysea wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t accuse them of Islamophobia or hate content when there’s a long history of Islamic terror attacks in India, attempts to illegally annex territory from India into an Islamic nation (Pakistan trying to claim Kashmir), recent history in splitting India to create separate Islamic nations (Pakistan and Bangladesh), not to mention further brutal history of Islamic (Mughal) conquest and rule. Why shouldn’t a party…

threat of terrorism doesnt justify hating the entire community, the policy of the current ruling dispensation is Islamophobic, Islamophobia wont help fight terrorism.

Is it the victim’s responsibility to separate out good and bad actors from a group whose foundational texts call for violence against those of other belief systems? Do victims need to shoulder the burden of making individualized statements that don’t offend over broadly recognizing threats and securing their own safety?

Sorry but you can’t blame the victims (Hindus) for wanting to be free of attacks on their people, culture, religion, and sovereignty. That is no different than blaming a rape victim. Likewise, you can’t pejoratively label people who recognize the threats of anti-Hindu sentiments/cultures/groups as committing hate speech or being *phobic. Defending one’s way of life is just common sense, not hateful.

As for the current “ruling dispensation” being Islamophobic, what is your evidence for that? Please don’t say CAA, which has been debunked numerous times over as just a way to grant refugee status to persecuted minority groups from surrounding Islamic nations. Those are countries that have Islam as their official state religion - it seems they are much more deserving of your attention in this regard than India or the BJP, since they are by definition much more hostile to those of different cultures/beliefs.

Lastly, your submission history shows you are repeatedly posting similar stories (https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=ashleshbiradar). This isn’t in the spirit of HN guidelines.

Re: Facebook’s ties to India’s ruling party complicate its fight against hate speech

#70

Post by actuator »

praveen9920 wrote: post #26

Hate speech is very common in Indian social media. Also, This is not just a problem with Facebook India, Even Twitter India's heads have very close ties to India's ruling party.

Are you sure about this? From what I gather the current ruling dispensation in India is opposite of left, and Jack Dorsey has stated in the past about Twitter having left leaning bias. [1] Might not translate to their India operations but I strongly doubt it wouldn't.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/08/19/twitter...

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