 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we're joined by senior journalist Poyajay Guhatakurtha and NewsClicks Prabhupur Kaisan. We're going to be talking about the latest in the controversies around Facebook in India. Now over the past few weeks, we have seen a number of reports including by the Wall Street Journal, which first of all indicated that Facebook executives and especially Akhidas, who had policy, did not take enough action to curb hate speech made by various leaders including BJP leaders. And since then we have had this flow of information about the extent of the problem, how much hate speech has been prevalent on Facebook, there have been a number of reports, and how little the company seems to be able to do to stop this. We've also of course had a parliamentary hearing on it and so we're going to be talking about a number of these aspects. Poyajay, so first of all I'll come to you and you've written quite a few articles on NewsClick on this before. So the latest news of course has been that T-Raja Singh, who was the legislator named in the first Wall Street Journal report, has been removed from the platform and this happens quite sometime after the original incident of course. But how do you see right now the latest developments and the company's response? Well the latest article published in the Wall Street Journal points out that T-Raja Singh, who's a member of the Legislative Assembly of Telangana belonging to the Party Janta Party, he has been finally and it's about time that they declared him to be a quote unquote dangerous individual. I mean there have been innumerable complaints against him including from people within Facebook and as the Wall Street Journal has pointed out earlier, Ms Akhidas chose not to act ostensibly on the ground that it would be bad for business. Now Mr T-Raja Singh of course claims that he's not on Facebook, that somebody else has impersonated him and or hacked into his account. But the other important development that has happened is after the two representatives of Facebook in India deposed before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology headed by Shashi Tarul and this happened on Wednesday afternoon. I was also one of the people who deposed but the people, the two individuals who deposed on behalf of Facebook were Mr Ajit Mohan, the Vice President and Managing Director and Sarj Purovin. She is the Associate General Counsel of Facebook in India and I believe this is the first time that top officials of Facebook have deposed before a Parliamentary Committee or Committee of Lawmakers. In the past various organizations, I should say various parliaments in Europe and others had sought to ask Mr Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg to depose but they did not. So that is quite significant and in response to what has come out, their deposition before the Parliamentary Standing Committee and what we understand that is not over. They have been given a long list of questions to which they are going to submit written responses. Facebook's public policy team in Menlo Park, California, United States are now claiming, we take views from people from different political persuasions, a very political spectrum. So all of this is Facebook reacting to the barrage of complaints against them. And I also want to put out a bit of information and I may be probate could interpret what it means. According to the latest data put out by Facebook, whereas Facebook had taken down 1.6 million pieces of quote-unquote hate speech content in the three months of October, November and December 2017. In the months of April, May and June of this year, 2020, this number has gone up, shot up from 1.6 million in 2017, late 2017 to 22.5 million pieces. Now I wonder what this means, isn't that suddenly Facebook has woken up that so much of hate speech is there on its platform or are they acting under pressure because a lot of people, and it's not just the opposition, it's not just the opposition parties have been very, very critical of Facebook for promoting the interests of the ruling party in India. So Praveer Parujar has posed that question of course and we've talked about some of these aspects including how this kind of virality is very central to Facebook's model. But do you see the possibility that there is a, where Facebook can actually intervene or is it too structurally biased or structurally loaded in such a way that there's no real possibility of addressing this issue? You know, let's first go back to the question that why did Facebook react to the Wall Street Journal's reports? While it is known that these reports were made by groups of us have given them a whole bunch of documents which in fact identified a number of people including the ones which Wall Street Journal has disclosed. It was also, there is also Equality Labs, another group which also did a detailed investigation about the hate speech, hate posts in Facebook and both had given reports on this. So there is public information already and Raja Singh has identified a lot of other people who are now in the media eye were identified and even at that time it was said that Raja Singh's posts indicate exactly what Paranju has said, a dangerous person and should not, should not be sort of pulling down his post. He should be banned from Facebook itself. And as he said, the Kaki's response, Akedas' response is again public. What I'm trying to say here is that Facebook's complicity or cover up, not acting on hate speech, was known, disclosed, publicly circulated long before Wall Street Journal did. It is unfortunate that after all these cases, all these things were brought to their notice, Facebook did not respond. And when we find out internally why it did not, is exactly what we have said that it's a part of the business of Facebook to promote virality and hate speech, because that's the way engagement increases and I'll come to this, as well as other people coming into their platform, seeing more and more of this post. So you get a echo chamber which you build, which is based on this kind of posts. But that is only a part of the story. The other part of the story. And this is what makes it much more dangerous that Facebook was not only aware of it, but also protected it, protected this posts and posters because of business interest. And here is the issue that you have a platform which has roughly something like 300 million users in India. You have a platform which also owns WhatsApp, which is another 500 to 600 million users. So effectively, today, you are a major media player, but you claim that since you are an intermediary, you're not responsible for any editorial checks and balances, but you get ad revenue based on the posts that come on your platform. So what you're talking about, what is the business model which promotes this kind of active action by Facebook really comes from the simple fact that more people viral, more people see this posts, more engagement they have the post, more Facebook gains in revenue. So their recommendation. In fact, that's the important part. The recommendation that Facebook makes, what people should see who they should try and friend, who are the people who are close to their views, all of it, in fact, promotes this kind of hate speech and hate groups. And that is the fundamental algorithmic problem that Facebook has. If you want to viral, reach as many viewers as you can, get more and more of them interact with your platform, then hate speech and fake news are very good instruments. So here is the issue. The business interest of Facebook goes against the fact that it is an important element today of our media, because as I said, the ad revenues and Facebook is particularly sensitive about ad revenues 98.5% of Facebook revenue comes from advertisements. They are much more dependent on advertisements than any other platform. Given that, if this is the issue, therefore to see advertisements, you need eyeballs. Why should people pay you? Because you have eyeballs. How do you get eyeballs? Therefore, how do you promote virality becomes the issue? And we know there's a detailed studies have been done by MIT. There is a detailed study that fake news promotes virality. And therefore Facebook has a business interest not to cut down on hate speech and fake news. That's the larger issue. Then Facebook, of course, very mealy mouth and very nice people, they will say, we want to cut it down, but what can we do? There are too many of these things you see. And we have to also see, think about free speech and what is free speech, what is hate speech. So then they start pre-valicating about hate speech and free speech. In the case of Rajasin, it's particularly important because Mr. Rajasin was also talking about Rohingyas. How to do that? Shooting Rohingya refugees who enter India. Now Rohingyas had been flagged as a genocidal issue and every country in the world or every platform in the world should be aware of it. That this has been flagged as something which is akin to genocide. And therefore there is a huge issue about the Rohingyas in Myanmar and therefore the question of refugees. What is he saying? Shoot them. So he joins the genocidal outburst against the Rohingyas, which was going on in Myanmar at that time. And this is, as I said, something internationally. It's not an India issue alone. It was an issue which had become international. So this logic does not hold good. And we have to accept the logic that Wall Street Journal has disclosed that Akhidas' simple statement was that these are business interests. And what the later disclosed, the internal Facebook groups indicated that Akhidas' response was not just business interest, but her political beliefs or her sentiments or her emotions were aligned to this output also. She said, you know, good that Congress and its socialism has gone. We've got the free market now. So freedom to exploit the Indian market for our business is now going to happen. And of course that you know is her praise of Modi and how lights drives elections. All of this is a public record. So I think it's much more than a combination of business, sheer business interest. I think in this case, there is a political interest and there is an algorithmic interest while you promote hate speech. I think all three combined in a particularly toxic way when you come to looking at what Facebook has done on this exhibition. I reiterate it's unfortunate that it's only because it's Wall Street Journal that finally action has been taken, though people have flagged it n number of times, two reports have identified with the posts. All these were ever given to Facebook and no action was taken till today. I mean till it happened today. Absolutely. I'd like to add a few points to what Praveer said, to supplement the information that he gives. Remember that it was an official of the United Nations who prepared a report saying WhatsApp and Facebook were responsible, held responsible for the genocide of Rohingyas. Now all this happened after the New York Times wrote about it, when others complained about it, they took no action. When the Rohingya Muslim genocide was commented on by New York Times, the United Nations took action and then Facebook apologized. Remember that, that's important to say, they apologized. Second point is we'll have to wait and watch whether Facebook will take the same action that it has taken against D. Raja Singh, against two other individuals who are particularly notorious for their anti-Muslim, their incendiary inflammatory speeches. And these are Anand Kumar Heddy and Kapil Mishra in particular who has been accused of making really virulent and toxic speeches in just before the communal riots took place in northeastern Delhi. And that's another important point that should be noted. The second point that I want to add to what Praveer has said, yes okay, emails have been leaked from within Facebook. Obviously there were enough people within Facebook who were not just deeply disappointed, I mean their conscience was tricked. So obviously they leaked all this information, including about Akhidas' bias and she herself acknowledged but I am biased, she herself says so. The important point is none of these statements have been denied. All that Facebook is saying, no these have been taken out of context, that she was not alone, these were decisions that were taken by many others. And I just want to add one small point that Praveer flagged, you know about the echo chamber part and we being in a, you know this confirmation bias which is promoted. I believe and there are a number of people who have been writing about it including American scholars like Shoshana Subab, Facebook and WhatsApp have actually hidden big mind. Considerations of free speech, the first amendment to the constitution of the US and privacy to absolve themselves of all responsibility of hateful and absolutely incendiary in inflammatory content. You know I'll go further to say in the last few years, each and every Hindu-Muslim riot, each and every case of mob lynching and there have been at least 30 of them in the last few years, behind all of them there's been a WhatsApp message or a Facebook message. From Muzaffar Nagar to Shah R Khan to Uttar Pradesh, Bangalore you name it. Absolutely. And Parvinder in this context quickly wanted to get your views on the regulatory aspect itself. So the hearings are of course happening right now. But across the world we have seen basically nobody be in any kind of position to say put regulatory shackles on many of these digital monopolies. Some of these companies have been hit with fines of course but that's basically a drop in the water considering how much they earn on an annual basis. And so in the Indian context, does it look like we have any kind of regulatory framework to address these issues assuming of course that there is the will or the possibility to even do it. That's a very difficult question to answer. To the best of my knowledge, it's only in a few countries that some moves have been made. In Australia, the Australian Parliament have said, you know, if you're going to distribute content put out by our media organizations, you should pay them for it. In New Zealand after the Christ Church killings which was shown by Facebook Live and over 50 people were gunned down. The whole issue of what you can show live, you know, blocking that kind of content that issue has come up in Germany, in France and in the United States itself. Remember Twitter put down content by Donald Trump, the American president himself in the wake of all the agitation of Black Lives Matters, but Facebook did not. Facebook chose not to because they felt, although Twitter certainly felt that the American president's tweets or messages could actually foment unrest, police atrocities and so on and so forth. But to, you know, this whole issue of regulation is very complex. I mean, clearly, there are Indian laws, there's an Indian penal code, there's a code of criminal procedure, but Facebook has its own set of code and community standards and guidelines. Now, here are cases where these, this content is violating Facebook's own norms and not just the norms, I mean, this is a legal issue whether it's also violating the Indian penal code and the criminal procedure code. And whether the government of India could put together a law. It's a very difficult question to answer. We have regulatory bodies, telecom regulatory authority of India, the computer and emergency response team, etc, etc. But even Ravishankar Prasad, the Union Minister for Information Technology, when he's also said, you know, there's a murder committed, there's a rape committed, but WhatsApp is saying we can't provide you quote unquote traceability of content because of end to end encryption. Because that's what's applied. No, but that's a different issue for India because the encryption is like a private communication that you have enabled. But the question is Facebook's information or Facebook's posts are public. And therefore, what is the regulatory issue with respect to public post as opposed to private small group posts are still can be debated. Coming back to what you asked, let me also talk about Mr. Ravishankar Prasad's statement. He has pitched in essentially saying people in Facebook are biased against BJP. And that's an amazing statement because now enough evidence is there, including the fact that they pulled out BJP pages, Congress pages, other pages, then they did not disclose to the public that also pulled out BJP pages. They only said Congress and Pakistan pages have been pulled out. So we know that they have been soft. We have the case of Mr. Thukral, who's a part of Modi's election campaign earlier, joining in a very senior position. We have bias of Aakidas herself, who's a very important person, if not the most important person in Facebook in India. So given all of that, to talk about Facebook having a bias against BJP is quite laughable. Now the question of when you talk about regulations, you know, as Parviya said, there are two issues. What are the regulatory framework of countries and what is Facebook's internal so-called regulatory framework. This need for a so-called regulatory framework came up partly because of the genocidal campaign against Rohingyas, as Ponadji has already talked about, but also came about because of various other things including child pornography, bullying small children, sexual harassment, revenge porn, and even the US, which is quite permissive on the question of freedom of speech, has said there are obvious limits even here. So those limits are what Facebook has to respect. The question that comes up is that if Facebook's business interests are involved, why should it then do anything? That's really the question that I'm posing here. And therefore the regulatory framework of countries is also something which Facebook does quite often does not recognize. Earlier its money was paid abroad in the sense that if you advertise in Facebook, you pay the broad. Now their payments are received in India. So you have one weapon that they do business in India. Earlier they claim they really don't do business in India, that all the business is done out of the United States. So that figment of imagination has been now dispensed with reality has been recognized. Yes, they do come under Indian laws and Indian laws with respect to intermediaries is quite clear that if you have offensive material you have been notified that it's your responsibility to take it down if you don't, you are criminally liable. So that part of it is already there. But the point is, who then acts on that the government of India, as you know, has not acted even after the riots, okay, against some of the people who have openly been accused of hate speech, but even in spite of that, no charges have been framed against them. So we are at a point where people who are promoting resistance to government in the civil liberties framework that passive protests, peaceful protests are being charged up with various offenses, but those who have violated those in terms of what kind of speech is acceptable under Indian law, they're not being charged. So we have already that. And as I said, the IT minister of the country now pitches in that in favor of in his own views, favor of a particular faction within the face within Facebook. So what he is best, the most generous interpretation that can be given that if there is a factual struggle in Facebook, he's on the side of one faction against the other. But leaving that out, the larger question, what is what regulation is possible. There are two issues here that one is if you do state regulation state acts, then of course we have the problem will they act against a faith Facebook if it is promoting them. So that is the one problem that we have to do. But I think the larger issue that these companies are so big we can talk about regulating them in India, but what does a small country do and there are a number of small countries where Facebook can really decide their elections by the way they handle the internal messaging within Facebook. And of course what's up. So I think the real issue is should entities who are so large not be broken up. Should it be, if you look at the monopoly power the wheel today, more than 50% of the revenue and revenue in the world is going to Facebook and Google more than 70% of the digital and revenue goes to Facebook and Google. So you are seeing a consolidation or a concentration of power, which you have never seen not even in the time of the big, the oil companies which were broken up in the United States if you remember, because you have really got what is central to all of this people's data and people's data about people's beliefs people's networks, who they talk to what are their views, what is called also the psychometric data, and all of this can be done in order to do targeting targeted advertising and the advertisers obviously prefer targeted advertising, advertisement over television and newspapers because the conversion rates are much higher and that amount of market power they have accumulated by virtue of knowledge about the people their users becomes more and more because you are also expressing a lot of intimate thoughts on Facebook. If you look at the post the very intimate post which people are now posting about their mental health about their sexual preferences about their politics about what food they like. So for each of them you have an advertiser. Okay, so that is the power that the wheel so should a company should set of companies today have power which is so large and let's not forget each of them now are tending towards a trillion dollar mark out of the four which are called in front of the Congress Congressional hearings looked at the monopoly aspect. There three of them are trillion or more and you have Microsoft which is also more than a trillion so four companies already in that range and you have Facebook which is about 800 billion at the moment not too short of the one trillion dollars and now that in India where stopping all the Chinese apps particularly tiktok and also PUBG and various other entertainment ads apps which are there that market becomes now open to Facebook Facebook Facebook saw tiktok as a major major threat to Instagram and in fact Zuckerberg as we know now campaigned against tiktok tiktok ban a promoted tiktok ban in the US mainly because they saw that in the the Millenials younger people who Instagram was capturing from Facebook. That's why they bought Instagram. They were now going for tiktok and that's a competition they wanted to kill. So I think all of this put together. I think there's a much larger regulatory issue involved that how do you handle such large digital monopolies. It's not an issue of Facebook. I just wanted to add a few points to what Robir said. You know it's not just Ravishankar Prasad. It's Rajiv Chandrashekhar. He's a member of parliament and he wrote in an article in the times of India suggesting that there was some sort of internal you know sort of group within Facebook in India who opposed and this was a sort of left wing kind of a hatchet job but then that makes the question how come they chose the Wall Street Journal as the vehicle. The Wall Street Journal is part of a conglomerate headed by Mr. Rupert Murdoch and Mr. Murdoch is certainly no supporter of left or liberal causes. That was one point I wanted to add. The second point that I thought I'd add you know this this bigger issue you know probably talked about child pornography when this very very famous picture of this young girl running naked from the Nepal bombs being bought in the Vietnam war Facebook took down the post saying that this is promoting child pornography without realizing the historical significance. You know when you have algorithms doing all the work for you you're bound to come across these kinds of issues. Two of the points I wanted to make and this is really I think the real problem is much more than Facebook it's what's happening because WhatsApp which is supposed to be a messaging kind of an application for small groups of people is still being used by large numbers of people. The BJP has mastered it very well they use it and they disseminate information and you know as Praveen was pointing out you know you have a country of 135 crore or 1.35 billion. In this country according to the telecom regulatory authority of India you have 1.15 Sims or subscribed by identity modules. You have about 900 million people eligible to vote and WhatsApp has over 400 million users so that's how big they are. To come to a few specific points about India. Two or three points one is that you know what was pointed out by the Indian Express recently is that look even in the run up to the elections Facebook removed 14 out of the 44 pages that had been flagged by the BJP. Now interestingly these included sites supporting the NDTV India anchor Ravish Kumar the television anchor Vinod Dua. But interestingly they reinstated many of these deleted pages and websites like Op India the Chowkwal and now they're saying it was taken down erroneously. Now some of these websites are notorious not just for spreading fake news. I mean take another case postcard news run by Mahesh Egbe and this person was arrested in Bangalore once. He was he was represented in court by Tejasri Surya who's now a member he's an MP a member of parliament of the BJP from Bangalore. And you know the counter attack has come to try to make out that there's some sort of a left conspiracy by the BJP is actually to write diverse attention. So they're saying Ajit Mohan the head of Facebook used to once work with the Planning Commission under the Congress led United Progressive Alliance Government. They're saying Siddharth Mazumdar who was the former public policy head had worked with Prashant Kishore and Amit Patel. Prashant Kishore at one point of time had supported the BJP and Mr Modi don't forget that that is Manish Khanduri who was the former head of news or partnerships in Facebook. Now his father happens to be a former BJP Chief Minister of Uttarakhand. Now he fought the looks of elections on a Congress ticket and lost but his sisters who belongs to the BJP is a sitting member of the Legislative Assembly of the Uttarakhand Assembly. And they also bring out Akhidasa's father-in-law was with the Trinamool Congress etc. So all of these in my opinion are really diversionary tactics because all this muck has come out about how Facebook is biased towards the ruling regime and how they've turned a blind eye to a greggious hateful inflammatory content. And under pressure from international media organizations including Wall Street Journal, Time, they didn't care where Newsweek published all the stories that we did. But now they're sort of forced, I mean they're sort of, they don't have a choice but to react. Absolutely. Thank you so much Paranjar and Prabir for talking to us and that's all we have time for today. Keep watching Newsclick.