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Facebook India’s Biased Policy Head Quits, Only to Pave Way for Another
From Ankhi Das to Shivnath Thukral, will anything change?
Earlier in August, The Wall Street Journal published a revelatory report on Facebook’s biased hate-speech rules in India. An Indian politician belonging to the ruling BJP party repeatedly expressed anti-Muslim rhetoric on the platform, going as extreme as saying Rohingya Muslim immigrants should be shot and mosques should be demolished. Facebook’s content policing team had concluded that this not only violated the company’s hate speech rules but also advised that he should be permanently banned from the platform under the company's, “Dangerous Individuals and Organizations” policy.
Yet, months after this conclusion, this politician was active on Facebook and Instagram. Facebook employees said that the company’s top public-policy executive in the country, Ms. Ankhi Das, overruled any punishment. She argued that penalizing a member of Mr.Modi’s party would “damage the company’s business prospects in the country.”
Facebook’s current and former employees said that such intervention is “part of a broader pattern of favoritism by Facebook toward Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party and Hindu hard-liners.” Ms. Das’s team, which ultimately decides what content is allowed on the platform in…
