Facebook’s internal memo, leaked by whistleblower Frances Haugen (a former Facebook employee), raised several controversial issues, such as rampant misinformation and hate speech, in addition to the company’s priority on profit rather than investment in understanding the local market. However, the most serious consideration is to allow Facebook to treat developing country markets with impunity in ways that are different from those in developed countries. Facebook’s relatively small investment in screening false, untrue, polarized and hateful Indian language content on its platform illustrates this point.
Since the early 2010s, online content and Internet users in Indian languages have sprung up. Between 2018 and 2020, some people within Facebook highlighted how hate speech and Islamophobic content thrived in dialects, and that artificial intelligence (AI)-based systems used for content review were unable to detect problematic content . These concerns were ignored by the company.
Although this problem is a classic case of putting profit above value, it also has a political dimension. Most digital platforms have been operating in India, and regulators have not required them to invest in protecting users from illegal, obscene and harmful materials. Even more confusing is that Facebook admits that it has hate speech classifiers in only four countries—Hindi, Bengali, Urdu, and Tamil—in India’s 22 predetermined languages.
Although the company has human reviewers to deal with languages other than these four, it only checks content marked by users. Facebook began focusing on the Indian language market in 2012, when it launched eight Indian languages, including Hindi and Bengali. By 2017, it will be available in 12 Indian languages. However, in addition to the availability of different languages, it is important to understand that users are free to share content in various Indian languages, even if they use English to access their platform.
Political parties often use vernacular content to reach supporters. It is in this context that Facebook’s approach—not investing in content moderation in Indian languages—should be taken seriously and further scrutinized.
News Source : The Indian Express
