Assembly panel again summons rep from Facebook after new leaks

New Delhi: The Delhi Assembly's Peace and Harmony Committee has now once again summoned a senior representative from Facebook India to depose before it in connection with the role of the social media website in spreading hate before and during the north-east Delhi riots last year — this time empowered with an SC order and after new whistleblower and document leaks showed that the company allegedly refused to act on internal inquiries, mapping how hate speech — especially against Indian Muslims — had spiked during the anti-CAA protests.

The Assembly committee, under the leadership of AAP MLA Raghav Chadha, is currently probing the unprecedented communal disharmony and violence in north-east Delhi last February. It had earlier summoned erstwhile Facebook India chief Ajit Mohan for its inquest proceedings as well but Mohan had approached the Supreme Court, following which the Assembly panel was allowed to summon and depose people under oath.

On the backs of this order, Chadha said, the Committee was summoning officials of the social media website once again to depose before them on November 2.

"Since Facebook has lakhs of users in Delhi, summonses have been issued in accordance with the mandate of the Supreme Court judgment on July 8, 2021," an official statement said.

The committee said it wants to discuss the "important role of social media in curbing the spread of false and malicious messages" which can fan disharmony and affect peace.

Significantly, this development comes after a fresh set of global leaks from former Facebook employees revealed that the company knew the impact its platform had on the spread of hate speech and refused to act on recommendations made by internal probe panels.

Parts of the leaks, which come from whistleblowers and internal documents, showed that researchers within the company had repeatedly found sustained anti-Muslim hate speech and propaganda on various Facebook Pages and Groups in the last two years, the Wall Street Journal had reported.

The report added that Facebook researchers had also identified a 300 per cent spike in anti-Muslim hate speech from such Pages and Groups after December 2019, when the anti-CAA protests began to take hold. This content violated Facebook's own hate speech rules, the researchers had noted and suggested that the Pages and Groups on which they are posted be taken down. In fact, the company even asked some researchers to reach out to dozens of users to understand how its platform is linked to communal violence, the WSJ report added, noting that the company largely decided to ignore the internal recommendations.

The Delhi Assembly's Peace and Harmony Committee has so far deposed several former bureaucrats, investigative journalists, digital rights activists and fact-checkers along with a former Facebook employee in its proceedings with respect to the north-east Delhi riots. It has said that its proceedings will be live-streamed in the interest of transparency, adding that the panel hopes to recommend suitable measures to defuse the situation and restore harmony among religious, linguistic communities or social groups.