CAIR kicks as whistleblower reveals Facebook ignored anti-Muslim hate speech

A former Facebook employee Frances Haugen claimed the tech company took little action to prevent the provocative anti-Muslim narratives from being promoted on their platform in India. The former product manager on Facebook’s civic misinformation team, now its whistleblower, cited internal company documents to explain how the company has approached the main issues and debates around […]

A former Facebook employee Frances Haugen claimed the tech company took little action to prevent the provocative anti-Muslim narratives from being promoted on their platform in India.

The former product manager on Facebook’s civic misinformation team, now its whistleblower, cited internal company documents to explain how the company has approached the main issues and debates around social media in India over the past seven years.

She has said that “fear-mongering” and “dehumanising” content was being promoted by Facebook accounts associated with Indian nationalist organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which is seen as the ideological source of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Anti-Muslim narratives have targeted pro-Hindu communities with the intent of violence and incitement, Haugen said in the document.

She claimed that no action is taken against most of these contents as the company lacks “Hindi and Bengali classifiers”.    

Classifiers are algorithms that detect hate speech. The absence of them means much of this content is never flagged or actioned. 

Facebook was well aware of those contents being promoted on its platform in India but “political considerations” prevented Facebook from taking real actions, Haugen claimed.

Meanwhile, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), U.S largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, has renewed its call on Facebook to address the violent anti-Muslim hate speech on the platform. 

In a statement, CAIR National Research and Advocacy Coordinator Huzaifa Shahbaz said: “Despite knowing about the widespread proliferation of violent anti-Muslim content on its platform for years, Facebook has failed to curtail it, contributing to dangerous manifestations of Islamophobia in the United States and elsewhere. Facebook has an obligation to prevent its platform from being used to create lethal threats against religious communities, including Muslims.”