By Our Correspondent
NEW DELHI – The false and mischievous propaganda through public influence operations on digital platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp promoting violence and incendiary speech against Muslims had exposed the toxic aspect of social media in India. A report carried in the Washington Post on this subject has created a flutter in political circles and drawn the attention of social media experts to the dangers of the unchecked spread of hateful posts.
An exclusive report carried on the front page of the Washington Post – the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington metropolitan area of the United States and having a large national audience – on October 2 has uncovered the network of hate propaganda and highlighted the systematic promotion of anti-Muslim sentiments in Indian society. The report is titled: “On Facebook, a network of hate”.
Moreover, Facebook has fallen short of its professed ideals in India under pressure from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. The BJP has been accused in the past of abetting violence against Muslims to strengthen its support base in the majority community. When harmful content is spread by the BJP politicians or their allies on Facebook, the platform has been reluctant to take action.
The BJP and its associates have built a massive propaganda machine, with thousands of activists spreading disinformation and religiously divisive posts via WhatsApp and other social media platforms. The social media giants have been reluctant to control these contents despite violation of their terms of service.
A new generation of Hindu vigilantes frequently livestream their armed attacks against Muslims on these platforms and receive large followings as well as protection from the BJP. These accounts are rarely removed, even though civil rights activists and whistleblowers have repeatedly flagged hateful influencers to social media companies.
The number of Facebook users in India is greater than the entire U.S. population and India is also one of the biggest markets for X, formerly known as Twitter. This has meant special treatment for contents that otherwise would violate the terms of service of both these platforms.
According to Washington Post, Facebook’s cautious approach to moderating pro-government content in India was often exacerbated by a long-standing factor. The employees responsible for rooting out hackers and propagandists, often based in the U.S., frequently clashed with executives in India who were hired for their political experience or relationships with the government, and who held political views that aligned with those of the BJP.
The Washington Post has stated that a narrative is often set through social media platforms in India to praise the government authorities and defend the crackdown on civilians. If some civil rights activists and journalists oppose this practice, they are immediately accused of separatism and slapped with legal cases of sedition. This is a complete misuse of the digital technology, the newspaper has argued.
Facing pressure from the BJP government, the U.S.-based Facebook has delayed action in a specific instance of disinformation campaign by a network. When the supervisor of Facebook’s Coordinated Inauthentic Behaviour (CIB) unit told colleagues in India that the unit wanted to delete the network’s pages, executives in the New Delhi office pushed back. They warned against antagonizing the Indian government and said they could be imprisoned for treason.
These objections postponed the intended action for a full year while the institution continued to spread disinformation through fake accounts. The deadlock was resolved only when top Facebook executives intervened and ordered that the fake accounts should be deleted. Washington Post quoted a Facebook employee as saying that it was an “open-and-shut case” that
Facebook’s rules against using fictional identity were flouted to surreptitiously promote a narrative.
The executives of Facebook repeatedly shied away from punishing the BJP or associated accounts. The local Facebook executives failed to take down videos and posts of Hindu nationalist leaders, even when they openly called for killing Indian Muslims. In 2019, after damning media reports and whistleblower disclosures, Facebook’s parent company, now named Meta, bowed to pressure and hired an outside law firm to examine its handling of human rights in India.
That probe found that Facebook did not stop hate speech or calls for action ahead of violence, including the communal riots in Delhi in 2020 which were incited by Hindu nationalist leaders and left more than 50 people, mostly Muslims, dead. Unlike countries such as China and Russia, India is at the forefront of a worrying trend, according to Silicon Valley executives from multiple companies who have dealt with the issues.
The Narendra Modi administration is setting an example of how authoritarian governments can dictate to American social media platforms what content they must preserve and what they must remove, regardless of the companies’ rules. According to the executives, countries including Brazil, Nigeria and Turkey are following the India model.
U.S. officials depend on nuclear-armed India as a strategic counterweight to neighbouring China. They have been willing to overlook human rights abuses and other problems in India because the officials deem geopolitics a higher priority, according to some former U.S. officials. India’s success against internet companies has inspired many imitators.
The Washington Post stated that there has been a broad reluctance in Facebook since 2014, when Narendra Modi was elected the Prime Minister, to take down posts of any kind from the BJP or its affiliates or to make designations that would cast India in a negative light. In particular, the people in Jammu and Kashmir were deluged with violent images and hate speech after military and police operations there.
In one internal case study in India, Facebook found that pages with ties to Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) compared Muslims to “pigs” and falsely claimed that the Holy Quran calls for men to rape female family members. However, Facebook employees did not internally nominate the RSS for a hate group designation because of the political sensitivities involved.
While Indian activist groups and international democracy monitors have warned about the erosion of democratic norms under the Modi government, the U.S. administration led by President Joe Biden has largely refrained from publicly criticizing a country seen as a crucial strategic counterweight to China in the Indo-Pacific region.
After meetings with Modi in Washington and New Delhi this year, Biden offered no criticism. Uzra Zeya, U.S. Under-Secretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy and Human Rights, visited India in July this year. She did not publicly comment about India’s human rights or its democracy after meeting Foreign Secretary Vinay Kwatra but said in a Twitter post: “Grateful for the vital #USIndia partnership & shared efforts to advance a free & open Indo-Pacific, regional stability, and civilian security.”
