5 Questions On Facebook

New revelations underline how the company is sheltering hate speech in India. Some solutions

- Apar Gupta and Anushka Jain

This week a trove of more than 10,000 pages of internal Facebook documents, studies and correspondence capturing headlines across the world were released. They have posed questions in the public mind, beyond policy wonks and experts, about the impact on India and more importantly on them as users of Facebook services.

What do the new disclosures reveal?

In September 2021, Frances Haugen, a former Facebook employee had submitted eight complaints to the US Securities and Exchange Commission. This is the regulatory body that exercises oversight over the capital markets and companies like Facebook Inc which are listed there. Her complaint alleges material misrepresentations by Facebook and that its management has misled shareholders. These eight complaints are on a broad range of issues including promotion of extremist content and hate speech.

Facebook also claims to strongly combat hate speech on its platforms, especially to identify it proactively. However according to Haugen’s complaints Facebook is deleting less than 5% of all the hate posted on its platform. The most damning revelation is that Facebook’s algorithms themselves promote misinformation and other divisive, low-quality content while claiming to prioritise “meaningful social interactions”.