The group sent a letter to Facebook’s Director of Human Rights Miranda Sissons on Jan. 3, arguing that the India human rights report was an important element of Facebook’s human rights due diligence and—at a minimum—should be made public.
ET has reviewed the contents of the letter.
In a response to the letter on Wednesday, Facebook’s Sissons said the project had taken longer than initially projected due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but it’s now in its final stage.
The consortium includes organisations such as Access Now, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Human Rights Watch, India Civil Watch International and Internet Freedom Foundation.
“Facebook has invested substantially more, in order of magnitude, on protecting shareholders over protecting the safety of some of the most vulnerable of its users,” Haugen, a former data scientist at Facebook, said, adding there was a need to push for mandatory transparency. “Facebook has demonstrated when they have voluntary transparency, and they find results that they don’t like, they stonewall, they delay, they make sure that no one ever sees those results.”
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In response, Sissons said that a range of teams at Meta Platforms Inc. (Facebook after its rebranding) are working closely to ensure that users and rights-holders in India are supported and protected from risk in the face of societal divisions and problematic actors.
In 2020, Facebook commissioned law firm Foley Hoag to conduct the HRIA, meant to be an independent review. Sissons said all similar assessments have taken at least two calendar years to complete.
“Given the complexity of this work, we want these assessments to be thorough. We will report annually on how we’re addressing human rights impacts, in line with our Human Rights Policy,” Sissons told ET in an email.
A series of revelations by whistleblowers, including Haugen, have pointed to how Facebook
allegedly put profits before user safety and how its algorithms fuel misinformation and hate speech. They have also said that Facebook had not invested enough into tools that track hate speech, especially in various regional languages in a country like India.
“Facebook should demonstrate that it is committed to an independent, thorough, and ultimately public HRIA on India, to gain and retain the trust of the human rights and digital rights communities, as well as the billions of users of Facebook’s services in India, and to counter the perception that Facebook is resistant to such measures,” according to the letter. “Members of civil society have shared their time and insight with the lawyers of Foley Hoag. We urge the company to release a public, unredacted, and complete India Human Rights Impact Assessment without delay.”
Late last year, the government
had shot off a letter to Facebook seeking details of its algorithms in light of the whistleblower allegations.
