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| The problem with Facebook lies elsewhere. With 340 million users, India is its biggest market. It is a general-purpose social media platform that offers users individual pages and form groups. "The wide range of features make it more vulnerable to all kinds of misinformation and hate speech," says Mr. Sinha. (Photo by=Getty Images) |
[Asia News = Reporter Reakkana] A Facebook researcher in India wrote in 2019, "I've seen more images of dead people in the past three weeks than I've seen in my entire life," after following recommendations by the social network's algorithms for three weeks.
The researcher's report was part of a cache of internal documents called The Facebook Papers, recently obtained by New York Times and other US publications. They show the social media giant struggling to tame the avalanche of fake news, hate speech, and inflammatory content -"celebrations of violence", among other things, out of India, the network's biggest market. This was made worse, reported the New York Times, by failure to deploy enough resources in India's 22 officially recognized languages and a lack of cultural sensitivity. Also, fact-checking is only one part of Facebook's efforts at countering misinformation. The problem in India is much bigger: hate speech is rife, bots and fake accounts linked to India's political parties and leaders abound, and user pages and large groups brim with inflammatory material targeting Muslims and other minorities.
A Facebook spokesperson said that the firm had "invested significantly in technology to find hate speech in various languages, including Hindi and Bengali". Many believe a large part of the blame must broadly lie with the social network's algorithms which decide what to show up when you search for a subject and pushes users to join groups, watch videos and explore new pages.
