 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we're going to be talking about the Wall Street Journal report that came out a few days ago about the going-ons in Facebook in India. And there's been a lot of controversy about a lot of op-eds being written by prominent industrialists, prominent politicians. There's been a lot of police cases of flurry of police activity also. But we're going to try to look at to focus on the larger picture here. And we have with us Paranjay Gupta, who is a senior journalist and also with Siddhu Sam, the co-author of the book The Real Face of Facebook in India, which in many ways actually preems this article by quite some time dealing with many of these issues. Thank you Paranjay so much for joining us. Paranjay, to begin with, just to go through the key arguments of the Wall Street Journal article. One of the first things it basically says is that Facebook did not remove at least one, they specifically named one BJP politician that is T. Rajas Singh. And they also indicate that there were others who had posted content which would have been in violation of Facebook's rules. But these accounts and this content was not taken down for the longest time until they say they contacted Facebook. So that's definitely one aspect of the argument. The other aspect is that Facebook has, of course, favoured the ruling party that's the partition of the party in many of its, they give the example of where pages identified with the BJP were taken down, but the proven was informed about it. So largely I'm the specifically named Akidas, of course, who is the head of public policy for the whole region and also some of her own posts and some of her own ideological inclinations. So since you've been following this issue for quite some time, first of all, is there anything in these revelations that surprises you or is this part of a trend that you have been predicting for quite some time? No, I'm not really surprised. Also because the writers for the Wall Street Journal, they had got in touch with me. As you're aware, the book that Cyril Sam and I wrote and Newsclick in fact published a series of long articles, five articles in late 2018. This was like a precursor to the book. The book was published in April, but let's go step by step. I think what's new about the Wall Street Journal article is that there were people within Facebook India who raised objections against what they called hateful incendiary content that was put up by individuals who were affiliated to the Bhartiya Janta Party, including Rajasthan. So that was shot down by Ms. Akidas and also I suppose Shivdha Tughral went along with her and ostensibly because this could harm Facebook's business interest within it. So that's what is new because it is clear that there has been internal leaks. Now, this is not new about Facebook. If you recall when Facebook refused to put down content which had been put up by the American President Donald Trump, even within Facebook there was a revolt of sorts. Because Twitter had stopped that content because it felt that that content was not just hateful. It could lead to public disorder. It could lead to violence and reprisals. Now what's been happening in India for a long, long time is that the right wing in general, the Bhartiya Janta Party in particular and Mr. Modi, Mr. Narendra Modi have been very adept at using this social media platform. And the social media platform has been very, very close and cozied up to Mr. Modi and the BJP well before he became Prime Minister. From the time he was the Chief Minister of Gujarat and this process and this relationship became closer over the years and continues. So, I'm not surprised that we see a big political brouhaha with the Congress, the CPIM, with others saying that look, this kind of nexus is a little too close for comfort. Because that would mean your platform is being misused for political purposes. Now when you talk about Facebook, you're not really just talking about Facebook. You're also talking about WhatsApp and when you look at WhatsApp, India is the biggest market for Facebook and WhatsApp. I mean look in 2019, there were about 900 million voters in India. That means there were approximately 900 million people who were above the age of 18 on the 1st of January of 2019. Compared to that 900 million, you had 400 million WhatsApp users. As our book has documented, there have been innumerable examples, dozens of examples where highly inflammatory content has been put up. And Facebook has always taken the shelter that this is our technology, this is end-to-end encryption. It has even invoked the provisions of the First Amendment of the US Constitution, the right to free speech. It's used provisions relating to individual privacy to be completely unaccountable for what is put up. So, what has happened is it was about time this escalated and this Wall Street Journal has escalated the whole issue. When we bought out the book, yes, we had a full house at the launch, we had a lot of people coming, we had some people buying. But when you have a reputed newspaper in the United States who splashes it on the front page, you must remember another thing. All those who are claiming, including Mr. Rajiv Chandrasekhar, the member of parliament and who's of course an investor in Republic TV, which is a right-wing television channel. Mr. Chandrasekhar is suggesting there was some sort of an internal left-wing hatchet job within Facebook. Now, how come they choose a platform like the Wall Street Journal? Wall Street Journal is really part of Mr. Rupert Murdoch's media empire. And whatever that you can accuse Mr. Rupert Murdoch, you certainly can't accuse him of being sympathetic to leftists or the left liberal causes. So essentially the article by Wall Street Journal, which was published on the 15th of August, has escalated and made more people aware of how these giant sort of digital monopolies, how these social media platforms are being abused and misused for political purposes. One last point is that across the world, there have been number of complaints against Facebook. United Nations official had accused Facebook because WhatsApp had been used, misused in Myanmar, resulting in deaths of Rohingya Muslims and these were all messages on Facebook. We've seen in New Zealand, Facebook broadcast live, a person who had gunned down people outside a mosque. We've seen criticism of Facebook in Brazil and of course within the United States itself. And therefore as the opposition to its unwillingness to adhere to certain ethical standards has resulted in this big queue and cry. So the standard argument given by Facebook on when any of these questions is raised in any country of the world is that we agree that there are a lot has to be done and we agree that much more. You know, but like you said, these are algorithms, we're trying the extent of the problem is too great, we're trying to, you know, solve it if things are brought to our notice, we try to take it down. So this is bevy of standard responses, which gives the impression of a company which is desperately trying, but failing to control the problem of it. So that's the experience in India bear out the saga or justify the saga. You see, feast with pressure from different parts of the world, from Australia, from New Zealand, from Germany, from France, from other parts of the world. Facebook was had to set up what they called an external oversight committee comprising a big team of eminent public figures who are supposed to have the power to even overrule what Mark Zuckerberg and Cheryl Sandberg the two, the top two individuals in Facebook, what they they even their decisions. Now so far we haven't seen these the committee having as far as India is concerned, we haven't seen any intervention from that committee. Now, this argument that this is our technology. Let's take an example from India. Some years ago in Rajasthan's Raj Samand district, a person killed another person who was a Muslim neighbor and and the so called love jihad he was allegedly, you know, trying to entice a Hindu woman. But the story is that this killing this gruesome act was videographed by a relative of this man. But Facebook through its hands up and say we can't do anything about it. Our end to end encryption technology, we don't know who's put it up. We don't know who is who it's gone to. Now, this is really the problem. You are refusing to be accountable. Even the present government, even Mr. Narendra Modi's government, Ravi Shankar Prasad more than once said, look, what if there are in your screams, what if there's a murder or rape and there's evidence on WhatsApp. Now, the courts of India are actually using evidence and that's come on WhatsApp. But that means you actually have to seize a person's phone and then get access to all the WhatsApp messages. WhatsApp itself is not going to oblige you. The last point is, you know, this whole thing about we'll take care about his speed. We have machines as machine learning. There's algorithms. I mean, a lot of it is just a lot of. I mean, these algorithms are designed by human beings. So I'm saying to expect those machines to expect those algorithms to take care of each speech is, in my opinion, completely unrealistic. Now, what we are seeing is the giant behemoth. This is one of the largest corporate conglomerates on the planet. And it despite all the criticism, it is desperately struggling to, you know, invoke provisions of free speech privacy to keep going. I mean, recently, you will be aware that a number of giant corporations including Coca Cola and Ford actually withdrew advertising from Facebook. I mean, they tried to hit where it would hurt. But Facebook seems to be trying to brazen it out. What we are clearly seeing is that the views of people like Misaki Das and Shivnath Thakral Prasil, even when within the same organization, there is opposition or there are complaints that the kind of content that has been put out. Against the company's roots. Yeah, it is not inappropriate. I mean, look in India Prashant, there have been dozens of mob lynchings. There have been Hindu Muslim riots. There have been public, you know, lack of order, public disorder if you like. And at the behind all of these incidents and episodes, you have WhatsApp messages. Absolutely. Right. Further in this context, one aspect, the article points out of course, but also something you have been working on quite extensively is the fact that Facebook has giant commercial plans in India. Now there is of course the investment in reliance that we've seen. There's a WhatsApp payment option that has been pending for quite some time. So could you take us a bit through what so far we've uncovered of what Facebook's grand plans for India also are. As in why is this an important market? That's correct. You know, for some years now, Facebook had been lobbying to get its payments mechanisms going because that's the one way WhatsApp can make money. Now the Reserve Bank of India took its time. But the argument was really about data localization because after Google Play came into the act, they have the WhatsApp mechanism has payments mechanism has come through. But the point is here you have a giant international monopoly, a conglomerate, which is tying up with an Indian conglomerate headed by India's richest man. Mr. Mukesh Ambani, who is also Asia's richest man and among the world's most wealthy individuals. And you have a domestic big week in the form of Reliance Geo, which was nowhere in the picture four years ago. And today has the highest number of subscribers. It's the biggest telecommunications and mobile internet data services provider. And now at a time when the economy is in a mess, you know, there's been a complete collapse in economic activity. There's been widespread hunger, deprivation and all kinds of terrible things that have been happening. Here you see Facebook investing billions of dollars in Reliance Geo. So we have a classic case of an international monopoly and a domestic monopoly coming together. And what its impact would be for India on Indian politics on free speech on the way different kinds of content is distributed and disseminated. What at the end of the day, you get to read and you get to hear and you get to watch all of this would have in my opinion, a profound impact. Just as the watch the journal has flagged the impact on politics. When you have the top brass of Facebook in India in very close proximity to the ruling dispensation, what we might end up seeing are bigger challenges and bigger issues. And in this context, finally, so what we do have is of course, like you exactly pointed out that the company itself having a decisive impact on Indian politics. And this happens, of course, both the actions of individuals who make these decisions, but also in terms of how the product itself has seeped so much into our lives, whether it be Facebook, whether it be Instagram, whether it be WhatsApp. And so then the question of what is a democracy, what is your politics, all this is inextricably connected with these products. So in this context, based on global examples, what do you see as any kind of way forward, at least in an ideal situation, whether this government is interested in implementing it is a different question. But what are the possibilities that lie ahead? Okay, now, before I answer your question, let me give you one very prominent, egregious example of how WhatsApp has been used in India. And let me give you the example from the 22nd of December 2018, when Amit Shah, who was then the President of the Bharti Janta Party, who's today India's Home Minister, he was speaking at a public rally for social media volunteers of the BJP at Kota in Rajasthan. Now he remarked, we are capable of delivering any message we want to the public, whether sweet or sour, true or fake. Now he is the second most powerful person in the country at present, he's the Home Minister of the country. You know, this issue has been raised in Rajasthan by Parliament. Now let's contextualize what he said. Before the Uttar Pradesh elections took place in February, March 2017, this was India's most popular state. The BJP had set up huge groups of WhatsApp supporters, and the total was about 3.2 million, 32 lakhs. And the really ironical part about the whole thing is that, you know, it was supposed to tell BJP volunteers about the truth and about false information. Now one particular person had put out a bit of fake information that the then Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav had slapped his father, Mulan Singh Yadav. It was completely fake, but that whole WhatsApp message went viral. And this is what Mr. Amit Shah had to say. So, you know, he said an environment that Mohal had been created as members of the audience smirked and unsure. Mr. Amit Shah's tongue was firmly in his cheek when he almost lovingly chided them and said, this is something worth doing, but don't do it. You understand what I'm saying? So this is the sheer part of how WhatsApp has been used and misused for political purposes. Ravish Kumar VNITV India anchor has famously remarked that there's a huge number of people in India who haven't had the privilege of getting quality education in an education institution. They are growing up in WhatsApp University. Let me give you a personal example. A young relative of mine came one day and he said, you know, not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslim. And I said, who told you this? He said, what's that? So this is the way it spreads. Coming to your point about, can you control? How do you think? In the U.S., they've been struggling. Elizabeth Warren, a legislator of the Democratic Party, she actually argued that you should break Facebook up and Google them. Actually fragment these by law, break up these monopolies in the way AT&T, American telephone and telegraph, the company set up by Alexander Graham Bell had been broken up. The way Standard Oil, SO had been broken up. Whether that will happen, I'm not at all sure. It certainly won't happen under a Trump administration, but we'll have to wait and watch. Within India too, the regulatory mechanisms are inadequate. And there is always this counter-argument, free speech, freedom of expression, technical, you know, this whole... Seekersive algorithms. Yes, yes, yes. You take shelter behind your ideas of privacy and free speech to just be able to earn more and more money. At the end of the day, a lot of people don't realize, oh, Facebook, we're able to connect with our good friends. We're able to share our pictures. We're able to meet long-lost whatever school meets, but you don't realize the other side of the coin. That you, your behavior is being closely tracked. You are being followed and your behavior is being sold for Facebook to earn profits. After all, it's a private company. It wants to maximize its profits. But the dangers it poses to society, to political, to what's happening in the country, to politics in this country, are really very, very important. And then this is true for many other countries in the world. And after the World Street Journal article, certainly true for India. Thank you so much, Paruj, for talking to us. My pleasure. That's all we have time for today. Keep watching.