Whistle-blower Frances Haugen has submitted internal documents with her complaint to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) referencing allegedly fear-mongering and dehumanising content promoted by Facebook accounts purportedly believed to be either run by or associated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological fountainhead of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).



In this photo illustration Facebook logo can be seen.


© Indranil Aditya/NurPhoto via Getty Images
In this photo illustration Facebook logo can be seen.


“RSS (Indian nationalist organization Rashtriya Swayamswvak Sangh) Users, Groups, and Pages promote fear-mongering, anti-Muslim narratives targeted pro-Hindu populations with V&I (violence and inciting) intent…,” says the complaint filed with the SEC.

HT has reached out to the BJP and RSS for their comments. The copy will be updated once they respond.

On Tuesday, Haugen, a former Facebook employee, appeared before a US Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Consumer Protection.

Facebook is defending allegations that the company has long ignored teenage safety on its platforms, particularly Instagram, resolving conflicts in favour of profits. Facebook has been accused of hiding internal research about how Instagram’s algorithms were negatively impacting young users’ mental health and other important information.

An “Adversarial Harmful Networks – India Case Study” document that has been filed with the complaint cites “political considerations”, the categorisation of India in “Tier 0” alongside the US and Brazil when it comes to what the company calls “Top 3 Political Priorities” and the company’s internal awareness about the issue of content against a particular religion in India.

Only 0.2% of the reported hate speech is taken down by automated checks, according to internal assessment. Then there is the known problem of the lack of language classifiers, which will be able to check for translations as well. The complaint says that Facebook’s internal records show how this problem of lack of Hindi and Bengali classifiers meant much of the reported content, particularly the anti-Muslim narrative, was never dealt with or flagged by the systems either.

Facebook has over 340 million users in India, which makes for a large demographic of its 2.89 billion monthly active users globally.

Classifiers are automated systems and algorithms that are designed to detect hate speech in content on Facebook.

Facebook has maintained it is detecting and eliminating more and more hate speech than ever before. In 2019, it claimed that hate speech detection algorithms on the platform supported four Indian languages—Hindi, Bengali, Urdu, and Tamil.

Yet, Haugen has claimed that Bengali classifiers are unavailable to monitor content in India.

Haugen’s complaint highlights the categorisation India gets alongside the US presidential elections as well as the elections in Brazil. In 2020, the “Top 3 Policy Priorities” for Facebook are referenced as “Tier O includes Brazil, India, United States” while Tier 1 includes Germany, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, and Italy. What exactly the prioritisation to Tier 0 means in terms of Facebook’s investment in India remains anyone’s guess.

Facebook has faced allegations of inaction against content posted by certain groups in India. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) last year cited an internal report and said it termed Hindu nationalistic group Bajrang Dal a “dangerous” organisation. But the company did not act on the report because of financial and safety concerns. WSJ reported that Facebook “balked at removing the group” because its security team warned that action against Bajrang Dal “might endanger both the company’s business prospects and its staff in India”. No decision was eventually taken on the issue.

Facebook’s mishandling of duplicate accounts, internally known as SUMA, is also under scrutiny. The data shared by Haugen suggests Facebook is doing precious little to counter the problem. Internal document filed with the complaint refers to one called “Lotus Mahal”, which indicates Facebook was aware of the use of SUMAs by affiliates of the ruling political party in India, to amplify their messaging. “BJP IT Cell worker (shared) coordinated messaging instructions to supporters (with a ) copy paste campaign…targeting politically-sensitive tags,” says Haugen’s complaint.

This will strengthen the argument that Facebook allows the amplification of political messaging without cracking down on it. The classification of India as “Tier 0” importance for elections, adds more strength to the argument.

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