Facebook India chief defends hate speech handling, says company's policies 'neutral'

Facebook India Head Ajit Mohan has defended company’s alleged mishandling of hate speech on its social media platforms after a scathing report. According to a report by Wall Street Journal, Ankhi Das, Facebook's Director for Public Policy in India, had allegedly told social media giant that punishing hate-speech violations by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders on social networking site would “dam company's business prospects in India.”

report said that BJP's Telangana MLA T Raja Singh had often made communal and incendiary speeches and posted it on Facebook, which was in violation with company's hate speech rules. It furr claimed that in spite of posts violating Facebook's hate-speech rules and qualifying as “dangerous”, Facebook was t keen on flagging m due to company's business prospects in India. 

On September 3, Facebook banned BJP legislator from its social media platforms amid growing pressure from political parties and civil society. Following WSJ report, a Parliamentary panel had summoned Facebook representatives to discuss issue of alleged misuse of social media platform.

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'Designed for independence'

Ajit Mohan told PTI that Facebook has remained true to its design of being “neutral” and “n-partisan” and acted based on inputs from various teams. He said that system is designed in such a way that individual can influence outcome, insisting that content policy team is separate and independent in India from public policy team.

“It’s designed for independence. So public policy team that engs with government, for example, central and state governments, is a part of my team. That is separate from content policy team which is part of global team,” he added.

Meanwhile, Facebook Inc anunced that company would stop accepting new political ads in final week of presidential elections campaign. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that re may t be eugh time to contest new claims in final days of elections, prompting social media to decline new political or issue ad requests.

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(With PTI inputs)