Facebook's role in the spread in India of images and hate speech likely to exacerbate inter-community conflicts was again highlighted this weekend through the disclosure of internal documents by various American media.
Recovered by whistleblower Frances Haugen, these documents have already fueled several revelations on the impact of Facebook and its subsidiaries WhatsApp and Instagram on the intense polarization of political life in the United States or the psychological health of some teenage girls.
On Saturday and Sunday, the
Wall Street Journal
, the
New York Times
and the
Washington Post
, among others, focused on Facebook's presence in India, its biggest market with 340 million users.
According to them, Mark Zuckerberg's group was well aware of the growing presence of problematic content aimed in particular at the Muslim community, but did not deploy sufficient means to hamper this phenomenon.
Clashes in India
This attitude is in the wake of what the whistleblower denounces more generally: Facebook knows, and studies, the problems but chooses, in large part, to ignore them or not to devote sufficient resources to contain them.
A report from the company's own researchers from July 2020 showed that the share of inflammatory content skyrocketed from December 2019 in India, reports the
Wall Street Journal
.
“Rumors and calls for violence were particularly spread” on WhatsApp in February 2020, when clashes between the Hindu majority and the Muslim minority left dozens of people dead, the daily said.
Account flooded with propaganda
Recognizing these issues, the group sent dozens of researchers into the field to talk to users.
Facebook had also in February 2019 created a fictitious account, that of a 21-year-old woman in northern India, to better understand the user experience, reports several media.
Without any indication, the account quickly found itself inundated with propaganda in favor of Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi and hate speech against Muslims.
"I have seen more images of the dead in the past three weeks than I have seen in my entire life," wrote the researcher in charge of this experiment according to the
New York Times
.
15,000 people monitor content
The group is "well aware that a weaker moderation policy in non-English speaking countries makes the platform vulnerable to abuse by malicious people and authoritarian regimes," the
Washington Post
says
. According to an internal document, the vast majority of the budget dedicated to the fight against disinformation goes to the United States, even if the latter represent less than 10% of users.
Reacting to these new revelations, the social media giant emphasizes having clearly stepped up its fight against problematic content in recent years.
Facebook has "invested significantly in technologies detecting hate speech in various languages, including Hindi and Bengali," assured a spokesperson on Sunday in a message to AFP.
It also has more than 15,000 people monitoring content in more than 70 languages, including 20 languages spoken in India.
0.05% of content
Regularly criticized for being mainly concerned with content in English, the company also claims to be extending the automatic detection of problematic content to other languages spoken in India and claims to already have algorithms working in Hindi, Bengali, Tamil and Urdu. The company has therefore halved the volume of such comments, which now represent only 0.05% of content worldwide, he added.
"Hate speech against marginalized groups, including Muslims, is on the rise around the world," and Facebook "is improving the implementation of its rules" as this evolves, the door also noted. -speak.
The group's influence in India had already been singled out in 2020 after revelations from the
Wall Street Journal
accusing it of a certain complacency towards the Hindu nationalist power in order not to harm its business interests.
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