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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

#71

Post by pjc50 »

dheera wrote: post #68
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.

Well, that's because news coverage and forums are very heavily biased towards reporting on the US. Even in non-US countries.

There has been some discussion of the effects of Cambridge Analytica on the Brexit referendum and UK elections. However, in the UK, traditional media ownership and cronyism is more of a serious problem.

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

#72

Post by retrac »

dheera wrote: post #68
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.

It's certainly a topic for discussion in the other democracies. Before COVID-19 sent everything haywire, Canada's parliament was holding sessions on the question of American electoral interference on social media.

Once it's back on track, Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook's management have a good chance of having arrest warrants issued if they don't start actually testifying and cooperating.

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

#73

Post by actuator »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #17
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 imagine that the Indian population might object to American companies..." Does the average Indian person even consciously reflect on Facebook being an American company? I get the impression that for so much of the developing world where Facebook/Whatsapp/Instagram are just about the only internet people know (because these sites don’t count against their mobile data, because they don’t even have e-mail and this is…

I don't think this would be true just for developing world. Till the whole Tiktok-Trump thing started, did teens using Tiktok even knew where the owner was from. It has an English name, English language localization.

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

#74

Post by [deleted] »

dheera wrote: post #68
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.

[deleted]

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

#75

Post by jariel »

jariel wrote: post #58
jedimind wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's extremely disturbing how can they justify banning tik tok for inciting ethnic violence yet give facebook a free pass?

It's a geopolitical issue, probably not one of hate speech. India is not concerned about US Government spying on them, so much. All large Chinese companies have strong ties to the CCP (they have internal staffers who are party members, essentially acting as internal party oversight). Ergo, TT is definitely an organ of the state. It's just a matter of 'how much' in practicality. So TT gets the ban.

FYI to be more clear - the Chinese Communist Party has party officials placed within corporate organisations in order to maintain control, and to require businesses to adhere to CCP Policy.

As of 2019 - 70% of Chinese business had 'CCP organs' placed within the company for oversight, and Xi wants to put it to at least 95% very soon. [1]

From the Guardian: "Central Organisation Department, the party’s personnel body, found that 68% of China’s private companies had party bodies by 2016, and 70% of foreign enterprises. Although these figures sound high, they don’t match the targets the party has set for itself. In Xi’s old stamping ground of Zhejiang, for example, officials set a target in August 2018 to have cells inside 95% of private businesses."

There is no ambiguity here: while the state may allow private enterprises to manage day-to-day affairs, all private businesses are subject to controls and scrutiny by the CCP - directly from agents within the company - so that they meet CCP objectives.

Given that, all Chinese companies are de-facto CCP companies from the perspective of national security and strategic policy.

The parallel would be Trump putting a 'special team' of CIA or Republicans inside every American company to ensure oversight of his agenda.

This is very material to the nature of Social Media operations and global influence.

Edit: which is why India et. al. are going to be much more concerned about TikTok than other apps and that the primary concern is not issues over speech.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/25/china-business...

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

#76

Post by mavelikara »

eklavya wrote: post #62
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…

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

#77

Post by jakelazaroff »

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.

This is a specious argument. Facebook already takes an active role in shaping India's political landscape, via algorithmic promotion of posts.

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

#79

Post by golemiprague »

Good, maybe they will all learn to stop deciding what is hate speech and what is not. Facebook is not my moral compass. At least the Indian government can be voted out if I don't like their hate speech rules, can someone vote out Zuckerberg? Companies should allow any speech as long as it is not against the law, I don't need their preaching or blocking or censoring or whatever, they are not above us all.

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

#80

Post by ican1 »

There's a section in India who consider anything anti-Hindu and anti-India as free speech but anything anti-Muslim as hate speech. They want to muzzle any discussion of ethnic cleansing of Hindus from Kashmir, Pakistan, and Bangladesh by claiming it's hate speech. But they want to have complete freedom for claims denigrating India or Hinduism. E.g. Twitter was accused of censorship when it removed anti-India tweets.[1]

I regularly see posts in Facebook denouncing Hindu gods and Hindus without anybody batting an eyelid. But if someone wants to discuss regressive Islamic practices like polygamy or halala marriage[2] (both of which remain legal in India) then they cry hate speech. "Free speech for me, not for thee."

[1] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/10/twitter-accused-censo...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikah_halala

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