In a letter sent to the Facebook, over 20 rights groups urged the social media giant to release a Human Rights Impact Assessment (HRIA) it commissioned in 2020 to investigate hate speech on its platforms in India.
The letter written by rights groups including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and India Civil Watch International was sent to the social media company, now called Meta, this month and made public on Wednesday.
Facebook is now facing increasing scrutiny over its handling of abuses on its services, particularly after whistleblower Frances Haugen leaked internal documents showing its struggles monitoring problematic content in countries where it was most likely to cause harm.
“The current perception is that Facebook is not committed to respecting rights in this case. The India HRIA is an important element of Facebook’s human rights due diligence and, at a minimum, should be made public, in line with the company’s responsibility to respect human rights,” read the letter.
Rights groups have been raising alarms about online hate speech and misinformation stoking tensions in India, the company’s largest market by number of users. There is an epidemic of hate speech and disinformation on Facebook’s platforms in India, particularly targeting Muslims and other minority groups.
In 2020, Facebook commissioned the law firm Foley Hoag to conduct the HRIA, meant to be an independent review. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Facebook’s Human Rights team has taken steps that can be perceived as an effort to narrow the scope of, and perhaps stifle, the independent HRIA it commissioned.
Hosting a press conference on Wednesday, a spokesperson for the Real Facebook Oversight Board, a Facebook watchdog group, said “Facebook’s pattern remains the same: take the well-intentioned time and feedback of civil society to identify a problem, do nothing and treat it as a PR crisis, rather than a threat to democracy and human rights. From January 6th in the US to the HRIA in India, Facebook’s response is deflect, delay, deny. Facebook’s calamitous role in India’s democracy cannot be hidden any longer. Release the report.”
The rights group said that just hours before the press event on Wednesday, Facebook responded to the inquiry, but notably did not promise to ever release the full HRIA.
Dr. Zafarul-Islam Khan, a former Chairman of Delhi Minorities Commission, said “As a result of the consistent barrage of hate on social media, particularly on Facebook, Indian Muslims have been practically dehumanised and rendered helpless and voiceless, so much so that now there is talk in the air of an impending genocide of Indian Muslims.”
“Hate is today a State project in India where the political formation in power, and its vigilante organizations & brown shirts are mentally and physically armed through hate propaganda to violently harm religious minorities, women, and Dalits,” said Teesta Setalvad, a member Citizens for Justice and Peace.
She went to say: “Prejudiced ideas, acts of prejudice, discrimination, violence –4 stages prior to Genocide — have been breached. That Facebook can be a participant-platform in this escalation up the genocidal pyramid is shocking & unacceptable. “
In Wednesday’s panel, and in the letter, activists cited the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which urge that companies should “be prepared to communicate this externally, particularly when concerns are raised by or on behalf of affected stakeholders.”
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