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Facebook reportedly chose not to remove posts that incited violence in India

Facebook has a poor track record when it comes to handling the posts of politicians, especially if they feature any content that may incite violence. This most recently came to the fore following the anti-racism protests in the US and the controversial “looting starts, shooting starts,” message from president Donald Trump.

While Facebook gave a sorely lacking response as to why it chose to keep those posts on its platform, it looks like the social media site has reportedly chosen not to go against a politician, this time in India.

The report comes via The Wall Street Journal (paywall), with the publication highlighting steps that the company chose not to take regarding the comments of India’s ruling party – the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP).

More specifically it says that Ankhi Das, Facebook India’s public policy director, intervened in stopping moderators from taking down posts made by T. Raja Singh, a BJP leader. Singh is said to have posted that Rohingya Muslim immigrants should be shot.

Added to this, Anantkumar Hegde, also a BJP leader, posted cartoons and stories alleging Muslims are spreading COVID-19 in the country in what he termed as a, “corona jihad.” Going off of Facebook’s position with regards to COVID-19 misinformation, these posts clearly infringe the platform’s rules.

At the time of writing, the company has not provided official comment on the WSJ report, so it remains to be seen whether its policy head did indeed chose to keep the posts up. If so, it’s unclear whether any action will be taken.

Time and again, when faced with these kinds of examples, Facebook has pointed to its policy on hate speech.

“When we find hateful posts on Facebook and Instagram, we take a zero tolerance approach and remove them. When content falls short of being classified as hate speech — or of our other policies aimed at preventing harm or voter suppression — we err on the side of free expression because, ultimately, the best way to counter hurtful, divisive, offensive speech, is more speech,” explained Nick Clegg, VP of global affairs and communications, in a blog post in July.

Given comments from the BJP, it stands to reason that the posts should not be allowed on the platform.

If Facebook continues to frame itself as not being an arbiter of truth, as CEO Mark Zuckerberg has noted on several occasions, posts that incite violence like the ones above, will continue.

[Source – The Wall Street Journal]

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