The Peace and Harmony Committee livestreamed session on Thursday, the company that now goes by the corporate name “Meta” faced tough questions from the committee. It asked Facebook to furnish records of content posted on the riots in Delhi. Facebook India’s Public Policy Director Shivnath Thukral mentioned pulling down any content found that read against the community standards.
The committee and Thukral sparred on the India-specific definition of hate speech, access to records on posts taken down, specific actions undertaken by Facebook during Delhi riots, audit on Facebook’s fact-checking partners in India, religious diversity of its staff, cooperation with law enforcement agencies, and workings of algorithms.
Many of the questions were not answered by Thukral who stated that he reserves the right to not answer certain questions from the Committee. On other questions regarding specific data sought by the Committee, Thukral said he will furnish documents as required by the law or what is available in the public domain.
When dissatisfied by the answers, Raghav Chadha, the chairman of the committee, said, “By stonewalling questions, you are frustrating the proceedings.”
Chadha is a member of the Delhi Legislative Assembly representing the Aam Aadmi Party.
Thukral repeatedly said Facebook, its advertisers don’t want hate on its platform and When things happen in the real world, they reflect on our platform as well. To that Chadha said “I am not sure whether hate hurts you because you are a business and virality of hate posts bring you revenue.”
A lot of time was spent by the Committee to understand whether Facebook has an India-specific definition of hate speech. Thukral did not give a direct answer but said the global definition takes care of India as well.
“For the committee to dive deep into this, we need a foundation of a definition. If we don’t have a definition, it certainly prohibits us from proceedings. It is deeply worrying as a chairman of the committee that there is no standalone individual definition of hate speech in the Indian context alone,” Chadha said.
The three-day violence in Delhi in February, related to the CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act) protests, left over 50 dead and 200 injured.
