Facebook’s user base in India is the largest at 346 million and it certainly has been walking on thin ice between hate speech and freedom of expression. It was very recent, that the expressions turned more egregious and eventually became a bad look for the social media giant.
HOW DOES FACEBOOK DEFINE HATE SPEECH?
Facebook defines it as a direct attack on people based on what we call protected characteristics like race, ethnicity, sex or disability.
- Any sort of violent speech/threat in written or visual form.
- Designated dehumanizing comparisons in any form whatsoever.
- Anything that calls for segregation
- Profane terms or phrases with the intent to insult
- Commenting on anybody’s mental or physical inabilities
Facebook finally decides to take an action after nearly 100 brands declared that they would pull off their advertising from Facebook. As a part of the movement #StopHateForProfit, which went viral. Zuckerberg then stated that he is determined to make sure Facebook remains a safe space for all kinds of people where they can use their voice to discuss important issues.
WHAT ACTIONS HAVE BEEN TAKEN?
- Under the recent most policies, Facebook has decided to ban ads that claim people from a specific race, nationality or immigration origin are a threat to the mental and physical safety of any human-being.
- Facebook also added the blue tick feature on Facebook page of a party. It basically, makes it easier for the user to differentiate a real, official political party page from the unofficial or fraud ones. This feature will be very important during an election campaign.
- It also recently added an “image context reshare” flag. This feature alerts the user when they are trying to share an image that’s more than a year old (fake news) or might be “potentially harmful or misleading” and may come close to violating Facebook’s guidelines.
Out of context images or irrelevant images are often circulated and/or used to deceive, confuse and cause harm to the users.
- Another change Facebook made is that it alarms the applications of a limit on message forwarding to maximum five recipients.
- Facebook is also currently working with a civil rights law firm to develop training sessions for certain groups of employees working in policy development
Facebook also confirmed that it will do more to protect immigrants, migrants and asylum seekers from ads that points they are inferior to other groups or make them feel excluded.