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

Facebook India Head Ajit Mohan has defended the 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 the social media giant that punishing hate-speech violations by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders on the social networking site would “damage the company's business prospects in India.”

The 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 the company's hate speech rules. It further claimed that in spite of the posts violating Facebook's hate-speech rules and qualifying as “dangerous”, Facebook was not keen on flagging them due to the company's business prospects in India. 

On September 3, Facebook banned the BJP legislator from its social media platforms amid growing pressure from political parties and civil society. Following the WSJ report, a Parliamentary panel had summoned Facebook representatives to discuss the issue of alleged misuse of the 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 “non-partisan” and acted based on inputs from various teams. He said that the system is designed in such a way that no individual can influence the outcome, insisting that the content policy team is separate and independent in India from the public policy team.

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

Meanwhile, Facebook Inc announced that the company would stop accepting new political ads in the final week of the presidential elections campaign. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that there may not be enough time to contest new claims in the final days of elections, prompting the social media to decline new political or issue ad requests.

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(With PTI inputs)