Internal Facebook documents published by The Wall Street Journal showed that the company's platforms were being used to spread religious hatred in India, and inflammatory content was primarily targeted at Muslims.
According to a report published by the newspaper, inciting content on Facebook against Muslims, especially in July 2020, increased by 300% above previous levels, especially in the period following December 2019, the period in which religious protests swept India.
Facebook researchers said that anti-Muslim material has spread in conjunction with calls for violence over the past year, during the period in which demonstrations swept India against the new citizenship law at the time.
Rumors and calls for violence particularly spread on WhatsApp and Facebook in late February 2020, when communal violence in Delhi killed 53 people, according to the report.
The report quoted Muslim and Hindu users as saying that they had been exposed to "a significant amount of content that promotes conflict, hate and violence on Facebook and WhatsApp, such as material blaming Muslims for the spread of the Corona virus in India, and assertions that Muslim men target Hindus."
The researchers found that the Hindu population received dozens of messages stating that they were in danger from Muslims, such as "Hindus are in danger, and Muslims are about to kill us."
The report also stated that inflammatory messages were spread in the form of Muslim men aiming to marry Hindu women, as a "form of control" over the country.
"He fears for his life, there is a lot of hate on Facebook. It's really scary," the researchers quoted a Muslim man in Mumbai as saying.
Users in India believe Facebook is not protecting them from inflammatory content (Getty Images)
Facebook Responsibility
The report said many users believe Facebook is responsible for reducing hate content on its platforms.
He said two Hindu nationalist groups with ties to India's ruling political party had posted inflammatory, anti-Muslim content on the platform, according to two previous separate reports provided by a team investigating the misuse of the company's services.
The reports said that one group promotes dehumanizing posts by comparing Muslims to "pigs and dogs", as well as "misinformation alleging that the Qur'an calls on men to rape their female family members."
The report states that the two groups are still active on Facebook, and have not been designated as dangerous due to "political sensitivities".
The reports also show that Facebook is particularly aware that users in one of its largest markets are being targeted by inflammatory content, and that they say the company is not protecting them.
More than 300 million Indians use Facebook, while the number of WhatsApp users is more than 400 million, and the company last year invested $ 5.7 billion to expand its operations in India and help boost the country's emerging digital economy.