Facebook in spot over interpretation of Indian laws

New York: As Facebook tries to control the “bonfires of hate and misinformation it has helped fuel across the world”, its moderators are often “mistakenly” told to take down comments critical of religion in India, with certain guidelines making an incorrect reading of Indian laws, a US media report has said.

“Every other Tuesday morning, several dozen Facebook employees gather over breakfast to come up with the rules, hashing out what the site’s two billion users should be allowed to say. The guidelines that emerge from these meetings are sent out to 7,500-plus moderators around the world,” the New York Times report said.

NYT was provided with more than 1,400 pages from the rulebooks by a Facebook employee who said he feared the company was exercising too much power, with too little oversight and making too many mistakes.

The report said an examination of the files revealed numerous gaps, biases and outright errors.

In India, moderators were mistakenly told to take down comments critical of religion, the report said.

It said legal scholar Chinmayi Arun identified mistakes in Facebook’s guidelines in India.

“One slide tells moderators that any post degrading an entire religion violates Indian law and should be flagged for removal. It is a significant curb on speech — and apparently incorrect,” the report said. Arun however added that Indian law prohibits blasphemy only in certain conditions such as when the speaker intends to inflame violence.

Another slide says that Indian law prohibits calls for an "independent Kashmir", which some legal scholars dispute. The slide instructs moderators to "look out" for the phrase "Free Kashmir" — though the slogan, common among activists, is completely legal, the NYT report said.