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News Desk: Despite being aware that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) promoted “anti-Muslim narratives” on Facebook, the social media giant took little action, former employee and whistleblower Frances Haugen said in a complaint filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Haugen cited the company’s internal records as saying: “RSS Users, Groups, and Pages promote fear-mongering, anti-Muslim narratives targeted pro-Hindu populations with V&I [violence and inciting] intent”.
“There were a number of dehumanising posts comparing Muslims to ‘pigs’ and ‘dogs’ and misinformation claiming the Quran calls for men to rape their female family members,” the internal document, titled ‘Adversarial Harmful Networks – India Case Study‘, reads.
The document further adds: “Our lack of Hindi and Bengali classifiers means much of this content is never flagged or actioned.”
Haugen’s complaint added that despite two-thirds of Facebook’s 2.8 billion global user base using languages other than English, the social media giant lacks “adequate systems” to deal with content issues internationally.
Facebook’s internal records also allude to how the company is yet to classify RSS as ‘dangerous’. Typically, Facebook designates entities using its services as ‘dangerous‘ if their online activity might lead to offline harm.
The complaint further said Facebook documents show the company “facilitated harmful content and misinformation around the world”.
For example, where the Facebook algorithm recommends specific pages to users, “40 per cent of sampled” civic content in West Bengal was “fake/inauthentic”.
