Final word in Facebook not with public policy team: MD

Facebook India, which is dealing with intense scrutiny for allegedly permitting its public coverage staff to affect how hate-speech guidelines are utilized, stated content material moderation is enforced by an unbiased staff and whereas different staff can supply their views, they’ll’t sway choices.

“Public policy in India, while being one stakeholder who can express one point of view among many voices, but they did not have any decision-making power in this. The content policy team that is on the hook for enforcing content decisions in India is separate and independent from the public policy team,” Ajit Mohan, vice-president and managing director of Facebook India, stated in an interview.

The social media large’s India unit has been dealing with criticism since The Wall Street Journal reported that Ankhi Das, who heads Facebook’s public coverage staff in India, opposed a transfer to take away offensive posts by politicians of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

On Tuesday, Mohan skipped summons from a Delhi Assembly committee to clarify why the social media large did not take away hate content material throughout the Delhi riots in February.

Also learn: Facebook in contempt, warns Delhi Assembly panel

Mohan stated there are strong inner mechanisms throughout the firm to deal with divergence of opinion on delicate content material, particularly these involving politically uncovered people, and the general public coverage staff doesn’t have the ultimate phrase in the case of content material moderation.

“The reality is no individual—including some of those whose names have been mentioned, who are people who report to me—has that kind of unilateral decision-making power in this organization to influence choices,” Mohan stated. “When it involves an elected official, we are pretty conscious that the process and mechanism need to be extremely robust, because these are people who are elected in democratic systems, and if anything, our bias would be that voters and citizens should be able to listen to their point of view and make a conclusion for themselves,” Mohan stated.

Mohan’s newest denial of political biases comes after a number of media stories pointed to gross violations in content material moderation requirements by Facebook. The newest report by US digital media outlet BuzzFeed News, which accessed an inner Facebook memo, cites situations of “politically sophisticated” makes an attempt to affect the Delhi elections in February.