Facebook whistleblower says firm can't filter hate speech in Hindi, Bengali

By Team Newsable | First Published Oct 7, 2021, 3:24 PM IST

Facebook, according to Haugen, offers concerns such as endangering minors, instigating political violence, and spreading disinformation.

A former Facebook data scientist, Frances Haugen has sparked a firestorm with her claims against the social media giant. According to the Facebook Inc whistleblower, the business frequently prioritizes profit over preventing hate speech and disinformation. Haugen's attorneys have filed at least eight complaints with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Haugen attacked Facebook from nearly every angle in her testimony before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation on Tuesday. Facebook, according to Haugen, offers concerns such as endangering minors, instigating political violence, and spreading disinformation.

In her complaint, the Harvard Business School graduate highlighted worries about Facebook's failure to handle disinformation, hatred, and other harmful content on its platforms. In an eight-page complaint to the SEC, Frances Haugen stated that "RSS Users, Groups, and Pages promote fear-mongering, anti-Muslim narratives targeted pro-Hindu communities with V&I (violence and inciting) purpose." According to internal business records, India has been categorized as a 'Tier-0' country, ranking with only the United States and Brazil in terms of the amount of attention it receives during significant election cycles. The trio is referred to as the "Top 3 Political Priorities" by the corporation.

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Whistleblower Aid, which claims to represent Haugen, filed the case. Because of a "lack of Hindi and Bengali classifiers," the computer engineer said, Facebook did not take action on India-related fear-mongering and hate content. On Facebook, 'classifiers' use automated algorithms and systems to detect hate speech. In the same case, Haugen's lawyers referenced an undated internal corporate paper titled 'Adversarial Harmful Networks - India Case Study.'

This is noteworthy since Facebook has previously said that its algorithms can screen out hate speech in Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, and Tamil. Remarks made by a former employee concerning the social network's detrimental impact on society, according to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, make no sense. Meanwhile, Haugen was defined as "a former product manager who worked at the business for less than two years, had no direct reports, and never attended a decision-point meeting with C-level officials" in a Facebook statement.

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In the past, many complaints have been levelled against Facebook for failing to take action against hate content in India. In January of this year, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information and Technology (I&T) invited executives from Facebook and Twitter to testify on the misuse of social media and online news platforms. The committee also questioned Ajit Mohan, the head of Facebook's Indian operations, about the problem of political bias on the social media site.

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