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

time.com

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

#81

Post by scarface74 »

wtmt wrote: post #10

This can only be solved when more and more people understand the threats not just for the present, but for the future. What Facebook and WhatsApp have enabled are convenient and useful for those in power. So while there may probably be some words here and there, we can’t expect a lot of change on the ground. Disappointingly, the Indian Supreme Court is also lethargic and chooses to look at more trivial matters than g…

What Facebook and WhatsApp have enabled are convenient and useful for those in power.

The other side of the coin is that people being able to record and stream police in real time has exposed corruption in the justice system that the mainstream media has been ignoring for decades. The MSM use to never question whether police were being honest.

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

#82

Post by [deleted] »

statguy wrote: post #48
pkphilip wrote: post #8

Facebook's actions in India are absolutely despicable. The head of policy at Facebook in India is a radicalized member of the Indian rightwing and recently put up a post stating that Muslims are a "degenerate community" and was forced to apologise just a couple of days ago because of pressure on FB from their employees. She gave a half hearted apology. Facebook should have immediately suspended her or sacked her: htt…

Imagine a White person, who is the head of the organization in a country sharing a post that African Americans are a "degenerate community". In any western country, the person would not only be promptly sacked, but would also become untouchable in mainstream organizations. The Indian politics and judiciary have been compromised by right wing Hindu nationalists and it is impossible to expect anything from them. Howeve…

[deleted]

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

#83

Post by scarface74 »

statguy wrote: post #48
pkphilip wrote: post #8

Facebook's actions in India are absolutely despicable. The head of policy at Facebook in India is a radicalized member of the Indian rightwing and recently put up a post stating that Muslims are a "degenerate community" and was forced to apologise just a couple of days ago because of pressure on FB from their employees. She gave a half hearted apology. Facebook should have immediately suspended her or sacked her: htt…

Imagine a White person, who is the head of the organization in a country sharing a post that African Americans are a "degenerate community". In any western country, the person would not only be promptly sacked, but would also become untouchable in mainstream organizations. The Indian politics and judiciary have been compromised by right wing Hindu nationalists and it is impossible to expect anything from them. Howeve…

See.

“The Southern Strategy” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy

Dog Whistle Politics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-whistle_(politics)

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

#84

Post by throwaway250 »

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

#85

Post by jeremysalwen »

throwaway250 wrote: post #84
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]

The real "Hitler-Style tactics" is not any specific historical injustice, it is the promotion of tribalism and nationalism, dividing people up into "us" (who have been wronged) and "them" (who did the wrong, and therefore deserve to be punished as a group) on the basis of race, religion, etc.

The opposite of Hitlerism is not Jews getting revenge on the Germans, it is liberalism. There is no room for whataboutism, because liberalism is not about showing how "they" are more evil than "us", because there is no "us" and "them".

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

#86

Post by commoner »

actuator wrote: post #67
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 re…

There's more concrete evidence of Facebook's political bias in the Wall Street Journal report mentioned in the article.

> Yet Mr. Singh, a member of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist party, is still active on Facebook and Instagram, where he has hundreds of thousands of followers. The company’s top public-policy executive in the country, Ankhi Das, opposed applying the hate-speech rules to Mr. Singh and at least three other Hindu nationalist individuals and groups flagged internally for promoting or participating in violence, said the current and former employees.

> Ms. Das, whose job also includes lobbying India’s government on Facebook’s behalf, told staff members that punishing violations by politicians from Mr. Modi’s party would damage the company’s business prospects in the country, Facebook’s biggest global market by number of users, the current and former employees said.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-hate-speech-india-poli...

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

#87

Post by xfer »

ffpip wrote: post #39
indogooner wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ideally they should have some morality to put basic human rights and safety above profits. Even from long term perspective if they continue to ignore hate speech against Islam on their platform I am sure they would lose a lot of users.

They won't. You don't know the kind of nationalism that exists in India. Just check out twitter.com/explore every night via an Indian IP. It's full of hate speech against Hindus and muslims. Some random guy/girl tweets some shit against a religion. All the media/bots/politicians jump on it and blame it on each other. Everybody is outraged by tiny things, they don't know to ignore things. Indian media thrives on these…

Social media and TV is the worst in India right now, very sad but i don't remember it being this bad when i was a kid.

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

#88

Post by heavyset_go »

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…

> * Facebook is just reflection of what’s in the society at present.*

Facebook is a company that makes a profit off of engagement, even if that engagement is driven by hate. Facebook alone chooses what they promote on their platform. It is not some kind of mirror that just reflects what goes on in society, it is a company that distorts the truth, outrages and pushes paid propaganda on its users in order to turn a profit.

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

#89

Post by dragonsh »

heavyset_go wrote: post #88
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…

> * Facebook is just reflection of what’s in the society at present.* Facebook is a company that makes a profit off of engagement, even if that engagement is driven by hate. Facebook alone chooses what they promote on their platform. It is not some kind of mirror that just reflects what goes on in society, it is a company that distorts the truth, outrages and pushes paid propaganda on its users in order to turn a pro…

That’s the reason mentioned in my comment that Facebook chose profits and market over principles in India based on WSJ research and this article.

In India they choose the side of the govt, political party and an ideology, it’s again a reflection of the kind of staff managing Facebook in India and although they are duty bound to punish such staff they rewarded them and still defending them to secure the market and profits.

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