Delhi riots: Assembly panel set to question former Facebook staffer

New Delhi: The Peace and Harmony Committee of the Delhi Legislative Assembly in continuation of its proceedings with respect to the purported role of Facebook in the north-east Delhi riots this February is now set to question former employees of the social media giant.

A formal notice has been issued to the witness for appearance before the committee on November 10. Luckie, who is a digital strategist, former journalist, and author and was an employee at Facebook Inc from 2017 till 2018.

He had left the organisation in November 2018, after claiming that it had inculcated a misguided work system within the company which has led to division in communities especially by the actions and inactions of the company.

Highlighting the rampant racism operating within the company's framework, he had published a memo where he pointed out that minorities are finding that their attempts to create "safe spaces" on Facebook for conversation among themselves are being derailed by the platform itself.

Non-black people are reporting what are meant to be positive efforts as hate speech, despite them often not violating Facebook's terms of service, he had said in the memo with their content being removed accounts being suspended indefinitely.

The said memo was removed by Facebook citing that it violated its community standards.

Significantly, some of the witnesses who have deposed before the committee — Awesh Tiwari and Pratik Sinha — had also alleged similar issues. For the very first time, an international Facebook employee has come forward to depose before a committee in India.

Luckie had also asserted that owing to the company's inherently biased modus of operation, minority communities are not able to trust that Facebook has their best interests at heart and underrepresented groups are being systematically excluded from the communication.