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Friday, March 29 2024
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Facebook has been really busy this week

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Events of the past week look like they will have a very visible effect on the working of Facebook in India. It all started out on Aug. 14 when the Wall Street Journal published an article by Newley Purnell and Jeff Horwitz listing what they called ‘several instances of favouritism’ shown by Facebook towards the ruling party in India.

In that article Ankhi Das, Facebook’s public policy director for India, South and Central Asia, was reportedly identified as being responsible for diluting the action to be taken by Facebook against posts that deviated from its community guidelines only because they were from members of the BJP. The article was immediately picked up by several media organisations in India, calling out Facebook for its partiality towards the ruling party.

Ankhi Das has reportedly filed an FIR with the Delhi Police on the reported online harassment and threats she is receiving every day. She has specifically mentioned the WSJ article and a Facebook post by Awesh Tiwari as a source of her problems.

Quoting from the article posted in the Wall Street Journal, The Indian Congress Party alleged that Facebook has been supporting the BJP by not taking down posts with hate content if posted by BJP members, for the sake of protecting its own business interests in India, while allowing the use of the platform to hit back at political enemies of the BJP. “BJP & RSS control Facebook & WhatsApp in India,” tweeted Gandhi. “They spread fake news and hatred through it and use it to influence the electorate. Finally, the American media has come out with the truth about Facebook,” he said alluding to the post in the Wall Street Journal.

Another factor that has disturbed the Congress Party is Home Minister Amit Shah’s reported claim that the BJP has enrolled 32 lakh people in its WhatsApp groups.

This has indeed created a piquant political situation. Quoting an article published overseas, so clearly and conveniently out of the reach of Indian law, an eminent leader of a national party in the world’s largest democracy, is accusing an overseas privately owned business organization of partiality in the Indian political arena in its own battle with the other major party in the country.

What is Facebook?

Founded in 2003, under the name FACE MASH by Mark Zuckerberg and 4 classmates, it was an effort to digitise communications related to their project work in Harvard College in a shared manner. The trial version was set up for sharing their photos and personal information for testing the concept and designing the technology required.

Within four hours of going online, it got 450 visitors and 22,000 views of the shared messages and photographs. By the next semester, it had blossomed into a fully developed platform for all Intra College communications.

By 2005, it had donned the avatar of Facebook, with the stated mission “to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. People use Facebook to stay connected with friends and family, to discover what’s going on in the world, and to share and express what matters to them.” 

So suddenly now why is it the bone of contention?

As on June 30, 2020, Facebook worldwide has 52, 534 employees, 3.14 Billion Monthly Active Users (MAUs), including on all its arms –  Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, of which 2.70 Billion MAUs are only on Facebook. Of these 1.79 Billion are Daily Active users DAUs), i.e. 66% users are active daily.

Globally, India has the most Facebook users now, There are over 260 million Facebook users in India alone, making it the leading country in terms of Facebook audience size. Only four countries in the world have a total population exceeding this figure, Indonesia 270 million, USA 329 million, India 136 crore, and China 143 crore.

Given this situation, Facebook can easily influence its targeted audiences in more ways than one and very quickly at that.

What has Facebook done to develop this user base:

Using it has changed the way we keep in touch and socialize, not only with the folks next door but also with anyone and everyone you want to, across the world.

Using it has changed the way we share and consume content: instant sharing of personal details, news and any content that is important to us, family info, political news, sports scores, funny videos —a few keystrokes and we are done.

Using it has changed politics in the way that President John F Kennedy used colour television when it first appeared in time for his run for the White House, President Barrack Obama used Facebook to sail past John McCain to the Oval Office in the 2008 Election.

Users have also unseated governments

In the past, ‘influencers’ used print media: Mark Felt, then Deputy Associate Director of the FBI, used The Washington Post to publish reports on Watergate to bring down the Nixon Presidency, only because President Richard M Nixon refused to elevate him as FBI Director after the demise of J Edgar Hoover on 2nd May 1972, and the subsequent exit of Clyde Tolson, Deputy Director, who superannuated at the same time.

More recently, using digital media, mainly Facebook and Twitter, rebels in the Middle East recruited supporters and then led them to overthrow sitting governments in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Libya, in what is widely known as the Arab Spring.

On a personal level, Facebook provides a ready platform that can be used not only for making friends and being a friend but also for cyberbullying, ‘gaslighting’, or ‘trolling’ where one can destroy a person with just one act, even if it is based on a lie. On a political level, such posts take us into the realm of hate content, fake news and all that.

The only tangible control, if any, is the Facebook Oversight Board, originally proposed in Nov 2018. It was constituted in May and June this year and in July Facebook announced that it ‘will not start work until later in the year’.  Facebook has till now been claiming to react positively on user complaints regarding objectionable posts, but its compliance record on this has always been the target of complaints.

Why Facebook can do this:

It primarily provides a platform containing basic tools that users then use as creatively as they can.

Notably, Facebook has never portrayed itself as the moral custodian of any political group, community, or ethic. It has always aligned itself with every opportunity to reach a greater audience and only in that sense is it equal to all. It readily provides a tool that the user is at liberty to use it how he pleases. Given the role that Facebook has played in important political developments worldwide in the recent past, there is no reason to believe that it will opt out of India now, only because of the discomfort this causes to the Congress and other opposition parties in India.

Since time immemorial, media, whether verbal, print, electronic or digital has been an arena for political battles, as this is the most accessible channel for political parties and their leaders to reach out to citizens and voters.

 Governments all over the world have been making attempts to place controls on Facebook with no luck so far. Facebook, instead, has always ensured that its bread is buttered on both sides, by the users and by the authorities. Facebook is now a publicly-traded stock in the US with its share price at USD 267 today. It has shown an upward trend since April 2020 and it might be no coincidence that this trend coincides with what appears to be the most bitterly fought American Presidential Election ever. Naturally, commercial interests have become paramount. And as Governments’ become vary of its influence and influencers, they are using all means to control it or use it. Facebook, on the other hand, is engaged in a fine balancing act to avoid country-specific penalties.

In the words of J.M. Opal, Associate Professor of History and Chair, History and Classical Studies, McGill University, history only moves the way it is pushed, and the political group that takes control first gets to decide for all.  

Pursuant to the article in WSJ and the political slugfest in India over it, Facebook has reportedly been asked to appear before a Parliamentary Standing Committee on Sep 2. The Parliamentary Committee is led by MP Shashi Tharoor of the Congress party and the summons announcement itself has raked up the divisions within.

As matters stand, this dispute, if not settled at the earliest at the level of the Indian Legislature, may well land up at the doorstep of the judiciary.

Hopefully, a ‘working arrangement’ may then be found to force digital media to keep individual expression free and safe from trolls and politically or religiously explosive content. This, if achieved, would be a good starting point for Facebook to recover the goodwill it has been steadily losing all over the world in the past few months.

Although we can empathise with the Congress Party’s concern that Facebook is being unfairly partial, finding a logical solution that can stand the test of time is the only way out and let us hope that India makes it happen.

Newskarnataka.com has reported a few minutes ago that Facebook, on Friday clarified its position, saying it has removed and will continue to remove content posted by public figures in India which violate its community standards.

And soon after, it has reported that Facebook Chief Marketing Officer Antonio Lucio in the US, has announced his departure at a time when Facebook is preparing steps to tackle fake news and misinformation ahead of the US presidential election in November.

These two developments hopefully, will, at least for now, help Facebook clear the mistrust that was mushrooming against it a bit too fast for its money power and global spread to handle.

This week has been quite challenging for Facebook and India’s political setup. Things finally appear to be heading the right way. Let us hope that India finally helps Facebook resolve the issues it has been facing both here in India and worldwide.

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Arun Pinto

For Arun, Journalism is an acquired passion, one that has helped him grow as a person. As an analytical journalist who prior to adopting Journalism as a profession had wide experience in the Automotive and Pharma sector.

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