How Facebook neglected the rest of the world, fueling hate speech and violence in India; The Washington Post, October 24, 2021

 

Cat Zakrzewski

, 

Gerrit De Vynck

, 

Niha Masih

 and 

Shibani Mahtani

 ,

The Washington Post; How Facebook neglected the rest of the world, fueling hate speech and violence in India

A trove of internal documents show Facebook didn’t invest in key safety protocols in the company’s largest market.

"In February 2019, not long before India’s general election, a pair of Facebook employees set up a dummy account to better understand the experience of a new user in the company’s largest market. They made a profile of a 21-year-old woman, a resident of North India, and began to track what Facebook showed her.

At first, her feed filled with soft-core porn and other, more harmless, fare. Then violence flared in Kashmir, the site of a long-running territorial dispute between India and Pakistan. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, campaigning for reelection as a nationalist strongman, unleashed retaliatory airstrikes that India claimed hit a terrorist training camp.

Soon, without any direction from the user, the Facebook account was flooded with pro-Modi propaganda and anti-Muslim hate speech. “300 dogs died now say long live India, death to Pakistan,” one post said, over a background of laughing emoji faces. “These are pakistani dogs,” said the translated caption of one photo of dead bodies lined-up on stretchers, hosted in the News Feed.

An internal Facebook memo, reviewed by The Washington Post, called the dummy account test an “integrity nightmare” that underscored the vast difference between the experience of Facebook in India and what U.S. users typically encounter. One Facebook worker noted the staggering number of dead bodies."

India asks telcos to find ways to block Facebook, WhatsApp in case of misuse; Reuters, August 7, 2018

Reuters; India asks telcos to find ways to block Facebook, WhatsApp in case of misuse

"India has asked its telecom operators to find ways of blocking applications such as Facebook and messaging app WhatsApp in the case of misuse, according to a document seen by Reuters.

India has in recent months intensified efforts to crack down on mass message forwards after it found that people were using social media and messaging apps to spread rumors and stoke public anger.

WhatsApp in particular has faced the wrath of Indian regulators after false messages circulated on the messaging platform led to a series of lynchings and mob beatings across the country."

U.S. Withdrawal from TPP Impact on Intellectual Property; Inside Counsel, March 3, 2017

Amanda Ciccatelli, Inside Counsel; 

U.S. Withdrawal from TPP Impact on Intellectual Property

"Further, the U.S. withdrawal from the TPP may have major global implications for IP rights. As the TPP was being negotiated, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) was slowly progressing in the background. The RCEP is a Chinese- and Indian-led alternative to TPP that includes all seven of the Asian and Oceanic states in TPP, plus South Korea, Laos, Myanmar, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Cambodia. 

“But the RCEP is almost certain to provide less protection for IP rights – especially pharmaceutical patent rights – than the TPP would have,” Rich said. “India and China are traditionally hostile to strong pharmaceutical patent protections of the type found under U.S. law, calling such patent protections ‘evergreening.’ “So, the rejection of the TPP is likely to allow an alternative, less protective paradigm for international IP rights to arise in its place.”"

India’s Attack on Free Speech; New York Times, 10/2/15

Sonia Faleiro, New York Times; India’s Attack on Free Speech:

The realization has made for decisions that were once unthinkable.

Last December, the acclaimed author Perumal Murugan informed the police that he’d received threats from Hindu groups angered by a novel he wrote in 2010. Extremists staged burnings of his book and demanded a public apology from him. The police suggested he go into exile. Realizing he was on his own, in January Mr. Murugan announced the withdrawal of his entire literary canon. On Facebook, he swore to give up writing, in essence apologizing for his life’s work out of fear for his family’s safety...

The attacks in India should not be seen as a problem limited to secular writers or liberal thinkers. They should be recognized as an attack on the heart of what constitutes a democracy — and that concerns everyone who values the idea of India as it was conceived and as it is beloved, rather than an India imagined through the eyes of religious zealots. Indians must protest these attacks and demand accountability from people in power. We must call for all voices to be protected, before we lose our own."

India: 600 Expelled for Test Cheating; Associated Press via New York Times, 3/20/15

Associated Press via New York Times; India: 600 Expelled for Test Cheating:

"About 600 high school students in eastern India were expelled this week for cheating on pressure-packed 10th-grade examinations, education authorities said Friday. The scandal received widespread attention after Indian television footage showed parents and friends of students scaling the outer walls of school buildings to pass cheat sheets to students inside taking exams."