Misinformation and meddling india needs an urgent relook at the conduct of facebook and whatsapp

Misinformation and meddling india needs an urgent relook at the conduct of facebook and whatsapp

After reporting around Independence Day that Facebook flouted its own policies on hate speech to allow hate content shared by BJP MLA T Raja Singh to remain online, because not doing so would hurt Facebook’s business interests, this week Wall Street Journal has further reported pro-BJP internal messages from Facebook public policy head in India Ankhi Das. These have Congress charging that the company’s global leadership team was not only well aware of pro-BJP biases of its India team but also willing participants to the decisions, while BJP claims that the reports are suspiciously selective. Crossfire between the two parties has heated up, ahead of the meeting of the parliamentary panel on IT.

Facebook of course owns WhatsApp as well, and a research study published in the Harvard Misinformation Review shows that between February and June last year, when the 2019 parliamentary election campaign was in full swing, so much misinformation was being spread on WhatsApp and its moderators were so unable to keep up with that, if five fake images were flagged four kept circulating anyway. Combine the power of the Facebook-WhatsApp platform today to provide millions of Indians their daily dose of news, views and entertainment with their penchant to selectively permit hate speech and disclaim the accountability borne by traditional media, and the reasons for concern are glaring. Social harmony, national security, democracy itself are on the line here if new checks are not put in place on this gargantuan and parasitic platform. But this needs bipartisan investigation and policymaking. Given the obvious dangers of regulation by the executive, regulation of the social media giants is best done under the auspices of a parliamentary committee with representation from both ruling and opposition parties.