Face book and
Twitter Partial to Indian (and Israeli) Interests (JR217)
Possible reasons
Facebook-Reliance Jio deal: The Financial Times has reported that, Facebook is in talks to “buy a multibillion
dollar stake” in Mukesh Ambani’s digital venture Reliance Jio. If it comes
through, this deal would greatly expand Facebook’s footprint in the Indian
digital market. According to the FT story, the social media giant was on the
verge of signing an agreement for a 10% stake when the negotiations were
disrupted by coronavirus-related travel bans. India is a key market for both
Facebook and its subsidiary, WhatsApp: this would explain the partiality of FACEBOOK
my comments : Source The Hindu
Dawn expose : Twitter
The spectre of an internet clampdown has
once again reared its ugly head. This time though, the perceived cause is the
social media companies — the digital gatekeepers who rally behind the idea of
free expression for all.
In the past few weeks, several users have complained that their
accounts or tweets were suspended or withheld for posting about events in
India-held Kashmir. The Pakistan government specified about 200 accounts that
were suspended to Twitter, accusing the platform of aiding India’s quest to
silence Kashmiris and their supporters.
Among the many people whose accounts have been reported recently,
President Arif Alvi also received a notice from Twitter alerting him on a
complaint it received requesting for removal of his tweet on Kashmir. Although
Twitter did not find the tweet to be in violation of its rules and took no
action, its content moderation policy [or the lack of it] has come under
intense scrutiny.
On its part, Twitter has repeatedly — in correspondence with Dawn
— maintained that it enforces policies judiciously and ensures impartiality of
all users, regardless of their political beliefs and country of origin.
However, it does not comment on the reasons that allowed certain accounts or
tweets being censured.
The content withheld tool allows governments or authorised
entities to request Twitter to censor content on a country by country basis.
The Pakistan government, too, has often used the tool against journalists and
activists, who have in the past year shared similar legal notices from the
platform.
Twitter says it provides transparency through a combination of
efforts. This includes providing direct notice of removal requests to affected
users (when not otherwise prohibited), the use of visual indicators within the
service (an alert showing withheld content), and by publishing the underlying
legal demands (e.g court orders) on Lumen, which serves as a public repository
for content removal requests.
A list of legal requests from the Indian Ministry of Electronic
and Information Technology on Lumen suggests that all of the censured accounts
belonged to Kashmiri users or those posting in support of the cause. The Indian
government cited Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 against
tweets it said were in violation of its law. The reported content was then
withheld from access in India.
The more problematic aspect is that the database does not include
all legal requests sent by India. Since Aug 14, according to the database,
India sent six legal requests. Evidence shared by users of the platform with
Dawn indicates otherwise. One such example is the legal request sent to
journalist Arshad Sharif, which is not uploaded on the database.
Twitter’s inconsistency and inaction on its own rules thus not
only creates a level of mistrust and lack of confidence in the company’s
reporting process, it also sends the message that Twitter does not take the
region’s politics seriously. Another issue allowing the Indian government to
control access to information is the lack of human moderators at Twitter that
enable platform manipulation. In the past weeks, many Pakistani celebrity
accounts have been suspended for ‘impersonation’.
A Dawn analysis revealed that a network of accounts —
ETF Associates and BMJ Youth to name a few — were involved in mass reporting
Pakistani accounts leading to their suspension. The ETF_RW account
was created in June 2016 and had reported over 339 accounts in 2019 alone. One
of the accounts it got suspended had a whopping following of 90,000 users. The
BMJ Youth account was created rather recently (January 2019) but still managed to
report prominent accounts, such as the handle of focal person to the Punjab
chief minister on digital media, Mashwani Azhar who is followed by over 33,000
people.The two accounts have now been suspended by Twitter, but more similar
networks propped up soon after.
Users posting about Kashmir
have also complained that they have been ‘shadow banned’ by Twitter. Shadow
banning, as the platform defines it, is deliberately making someone’s content
undiscoverable to everyone except the person who posted it, unbeknownst to the
original poster. Others, particularly Indian users, have also reported that
their tweets in support of Kashmir are marked as “sensitive content” on the
platform which means it will not be visible unless someone clicks on it.Twitter
has refuted the accusations outright. “We do not shadow ban. And we certainly
don’t shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology,” it claims. It does
not elaborate further. And that’s where the problem lies; the platform when
confronted with questions of how it decides what permissible speech is online
provides brief policy statements, rather than taking the opportunity to provide
their users with more details about how they control the content.
While Twitter has its share of problems, to blame its opaque moderation
for non-compliance to Pakistan would not be entirely correct. To hold Twitter
accountable is a process beyond emotive, reactionary statements. With over 34
million users, a local presence and a revenue making industry that is India,
Pakistan (with nearly a million users) must consider whether digital
collaboration is among its long-term priorities.
Published in Dawn, August 31st, 2019
My experience with Facebook
I (Javed Rashid )
have a number of groups that I manage on Facebook, these include : Kashmir
Struggle News Dissemination Platform ( 53700 members as of Mar., 25, 2020, 7,41
am) ; and KBDS: Kashmir- Boycott,
Divestment, Sanctions: India (292 members
as of Mar., 25, 2020, 7,41 am), The former
named is constantly threatened by
vulgar irrelevant posts. These undesirable posts are repeated in a large
numbers, all of this forced us to revise the posting policy to pre approval of posts.
More seriously, however, I also write blog(s) that carry weekly and monthly update
of news and analysis related to: Struggle for freedom of Kashmiri people; Human
rights violations of Indian armed forces in Indian Occupied Kashmir; and
Muslims in India (monthly update ). Facebook has banned my two blogs (at
Blogger https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1888686140647377049#allposts, and Word Press, https://wordpress.com/posts/javed47rashid.wordpress.com) , The blogger site carries a large number of posts but the Word Press
site has few posts. Face book has deleted a post from The word Press site https://javed47rashid.wordpress.com/2020/03/11/northern-areas-gilgit-and-baltistan-jr-213/, this and other posts including the weekly and monthly updates are
based on verifiable sources, sources are also quoted in the updates. All of this
makes it difficult to convey to my viewers the updates mentioned above.
Hindu right wing and Muslims: Apr., 14, 2020:
The campaign uses hashtags like #CoronaJihad, #CrushTablighiSpitters,
#MuslimMeaningTerrorist, and #BioJihad to spread misinformation on platforms
like Facebook and Twitter That meeting and the revelation that members of the group
tested positive for coronavirus was the spark that kickstarted a virulent hate
speech campaign online that has seen far-right Hindu nationalists weaponize
Facebook and Twitter to attack and threaten Muslims in India.That campaign,
baseless and hateful, claims that Muslims are purposely infecting swathes of
the Indian population. The campaign uses hashtags like #CoronaJihad,
#CrushTablighiSpitters, #MuslimMeaningTerrorist, and #BioJihad on platforms
like Facebook and Twitter. The posts are being shared with hundreds of millions
of people by supporters of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his political
party. The campaign shows how fears about the spread of the coronavirus have
merged with longstanding Islamophobia in India, putting the lives of India’s
200 million Muslims at risk. Activists in India say they have been
flagging the issue with both Facebook and Twitter for weeks, but that very
little has been done to stop the spread of the hate speech. “I
really don't think that any of the platforms have an excuse because it’d be one
thing if they were inundated like everybody else, wondering what's happening,
but they've been receiving reports of many of these individual pages and
individual handles and this content way before this,” Thenmozhi Soundararajan,
the executive director of Equality Labs, a South Asian community technology
organization, told VICE News. “And the response has not been appropriate given
the gravity and the danger of the speech
Modi and the ruling
Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have been fomenting anti-Muslim
sentiment for some time, but the current wave of Islamophobia began after
authorities pinpointed the Tablighi Jamaat meeting in early March as a source
of many infections in India. Now,
some of the same right-wing figures who used social media to amplify attacks on the Muslim
community during last year’s controversy over the Citizenship
Amendment Act, which granted non-Muslim immigrants to India citizenship, are
using the Tablighi Jamaat meeting to claim that Muslims are purposely spreading
coronavirus across the country. In addition to hashtags, fake videos purporting
to show Muslims purposely sneezing on people are being shared widely on Twitter
and Facebook. One of the most popular videos being shared claims to show a
Muslim man intentionally coughing on somebody. One tweet showing the video was retweeted
more than 4,300 times before it was removed. The account that posted
it, however, remains active, posting obviously anti-Muslim
content. The video, of course, is fake, and was filmed in Thailand long
before the pandemic began, but that didn’t stop the videos being shared by
verified accounts linked to the BJP. The hateful accusations
against India’s Muslim population have been shared by BJP officials, national television channels and journalists aligned with the government. Analysis
by Equality Labs shows that the groups sharing the anti-Muslim hashtags on
Facebook are supporters of Modi and the BJP, or groups related to the Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a Hindu nationalist paramilitary volunteer
organization. They include the
Indian Defense Force (2.8 million followers), BJP For India Page (580,000
followers), and West Bengal BJP Supporters (350,000 followers). According to data from
the social media monitoring tool CrowdTangle, between March 29 and April 3 the
#coronajihad hashtag alone has had over 249,733 interactions on Facebook. On Twitter, almost 300,000
conversations took place with the #coronajihad hashtag, with over 700,000
accounts engaging in those conversations, according to data from social media
analysis tool TalkWalker. The potential reach of those conversations was 170
million accounts. Facebook
said it had removed a number of hashtags flagged by Equality Labs, and searches
on the platform for #coronajihad and several other hashtags did not return
results on Friday morning — but there are many other similar hashtags still in
use on Facebook. Modi, the BJP, and its social media army have
been leveraging the power of social media for years to cement its position as
the most popular party in the country and to push anti-Muslim sentiment. The
BJP has become adept at hiding its behavior to give the party and the prime
minister plausible deniability. But there are signs the social media attacks on
Muslims in recent weeks were coordinated. https://www.vice.com/en_asia/article/akwmyj/indias-hindu-nationalists-are-inciting-hate-by-claiming-muslims-are-spreading-coronavirus
Facebook bats for India: Dec., 31, 2019: Facebook has blocked live streaming of the Pakistan Broadcasting
Corporation's (PBC) news bulletins for highlighting Indian atrocities in
occupied Kashmir,Radio Pakistan reported
on Monday. In its report, Radio Pakistan has included screenshots of earlier
warning messages received from the social-media giant, dating back to May,
warning the public broadcaster of violating "community standards on
dangerous individuals and organisations". Specifically, these posts were
from news stories about the death anniversary of Hizbul Mujahideen leader
Burhan Wani in July and the curfew imposed after the death of Zakir Musa, also
a Hizbul Mujahideen commander, in May.
In 2016, Facebook came under fire for censoring dozens of posts related
to the death of Wani, reported The Guardian. Photos,
videos and entire accounts of academics and journalists as well as entire pages
of local newspapers were removed for posting about the occupied valley. The
Indian government had imposed curbs on newspapers as well but residents of
occupied Kashmir complained that censoring posts on Facebook made information
blackouts worse. Due to limited access to newspapers and TV channels, journalists
and news organisations would keep readers informed by updates on social media,
until the social media giant started censoring news articles and updates about
occupied Kashmir. The Facebook account of Kashmiri journalist Huma Dar, who is
based in the United States, was deleted soon after she posted pictures of
Wani's funeral and was told that she had "violated community
standards" when she wrote to the social media giant. "The biggest
irony is that I get death threats, I get people saying they’ll come and rape me
and my mother. None of those people, even when I complain to Facebook, have
ever been censored," she told The Guardian. More recently, Twitter
faced criticism after rights activists voiced concerns over the removal of
hundreds of tweets critical of the Indian government's policies in occupied
Kashmir, reported Al Jazeera. According
to the Al Jazeera report, a study by a media watchdog revealed that nearly one
million tweets had been removed since 2017.
Of the 17,807 content restrictions made by Facebook globally, the
highest number — over 31 per cent — of the requests originated from Pakistan
between January and July 2019, according to the platform’s latest transparency
report released in November. Facebook restricted 5,690 items within Pakistan
during the first half of 2019, as compared to 4,174 pieces from the second half
of 2018. https://www.dawn.com/news/1525252/facebook-blocks-live-streaming-of-pbc-news-bulletins-over-kashmir-coverage-radio-pakistan
Facebook and Kashmir: Jan., 2, 2019: FACEBOOK often struggles with its principles
regarding freedom of speech for users versus its bottom line, which requires
keeping powerful stakeholders happy.This appeared to be on display once again
on Monday, when the company blocked live streaming of the Pakistan Broadcasting
Corporation’s news bulletins highlighting Indian atrocities in occupied
Kashmir. There is a broader pattern,
since the death of Burhan Wani in 2016, of Facebook methodically censoring news
and opinion on the Kashmir crisis. Based on news reports and details shared by
users, censorship activities occur in short, sharp spikes around current events
connected to India. It is reasonable to assume that this policy is set in place
through lobbying by India, one of Facebook’s critical markets. The question of
who is a terrorist and who is a freedom fighter; which struggle is legitimate
and which is not, comes down to who has more sway with the social network,
which is largely determined by size and scope of the market, not by higher
principles or nuanced examination of the issue at hand . The internet is still
unpredictable; companies rise and fall, and if Facebook, Twitter and YouTube do
not offer their users the freedom they seek, they will go elsewhere. This is a
fundamental the platforms must recognize sooner rather than later. https://www.dawn.com/news/1525581/facebook-vs-kashmir
Facebook and India: Apr., 24, 2020: Reliance snapped
up a cool $5.7 billion (Rs 43,574 crore) investment from Facebook in return for
a 9.99% stake in Jio Platforms, the subsidiary that will house a majority of
the empire’s digital assets. Ambani also has more than a few reasons to be
happy. Facebook’s investment and corresponding valuation is higher than the
average Rs 4.2 trillion enterprise value given to the company by top brokers such as Citi Investment
Research, Kotak Institutional Equities, JP Morgan India and Goldman Sachs
India. RIL’s total investment in Jio
currently stands at about Rs 1.8 lakh crore — one way of looking at this
therefore is that what effectively cost the company about Rs 18,000 crore (a
10% stake) is now being sold for over three times that amount (Rs 43,574 crore While Ambani no doubt has plans for unlocking
the value of the Jio ecosystem’s apps, one key line of attack was unveiled with
the Facebook announcement – mixing WhatsApp with JioMart. Both Zuckerberg and
Ambani, the latter more so, went out of their way to describe how the deal will
give Reliance access to the over 400-million-strong database of WhatsApp as it
seeks to jump-start its commerce business under JioMart. Under this
partnership, the company said, it would offer consumers the ability to access
the nearest kirana,
which can deliver products and services, after transactions via JioMart using
WhatsApp. “In the very near future, JioMart and WhatsApp will empower nearly three
crore small Indian kirana shops to digitally transact with every customer in
their neighbourhood. This means all of you can order and get faster delivery of
day-to-day items from nearby local shops. At the same time, small kiranas can
grow their businesses and create new employment opportunities,” Ambani said in
a video on Wednesday. This ‘phygital commerce’ strategy – where your
local kirana store is on WhatsApp and you send him a message to order your
groceries – appears to be the first major project that Facebook and Jio will
work on. “Facebook wants to use WhatsApp for e-commerce opportunities
with small businesses. Amazon, Flipkart can’t compete with Jio-Facebook because
they don’t have an edge on data. While in the short term, there may not be much
market impact as due to COVID-19 nothing significant shall happen in the next
3-6 months, however in the long term the alliance will not only counter competitors
like Amazon and Flipkart, but will rupture the entire e-commerce ecosystem in
the country,” said Waris. There are also broader mutterings about how Jio and
Facebook could eventually create a super-app, along the likes of WeChat in
China The second explanation doing the
rounds is that Facebook’s investment in Jio is a safe bet on avoiding the
future wrath by India’s authorities. There has never been more scrutiny of ‘Big
Tech’ and the challenges posed by foreign companies in terms of law enforcement
and how they handle the sensitive personal data of Indian citizens and
organisations. The theory here is that COVID-19 pandemic will only accelerate
these protectionist concerns and by picking up a near 10% stake in Jio,
Zuckerberg appears to be buying ‘protection’ in a manner of speaking. Or at the
very least, Reliance and Facebook may find more common ground when it comes to
their lobbying efforts in the future. 2019 ”.
https://thewire.in/business/four-reasons-why-facebook-is-buying-a-nearly-10-stake-in-mukesh-ambanis-reliance-jio
Facebook
and BJP: Jun., 9, 2020: The failure of Facebook to moderate
content helped fuel religious strife in India and other countries, a report by
New York University’s Stern Center for Business and Human Rights has said. The report cites examples of problematic
content shared on Facebook in India – especially targeting Muslims, some by
“affiliates” of the ruling BJP – and pointed out that the social media giant
failed to take it down. The observations were part of a broader report where
the Stern Center, which aims to study how businesses approach human rights
issues in the countries where they function, sought to highlight the importance
of content moderation. The report was released on 8 June and is titled, “Who
Moderates the Social Media Giants? A Call to End Outsourcing”. It is meant to
trigger better pay and work conditions for content moderators, whom it describes
as crucial to keeping internet a safe space. The report looks at how social
media firms Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube moderate their content and the ways
the process can be improved. The “antagonists, some of them affiliated with
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatia Janata Party (sic)” have “once again…
exploited Facebook in one component of a broader anti-Muslim movement in
India”. As an example, the report cites a Facebook video from 2019 where a
“group of men affiliated with the militant wing of the BJP (sic) brandished
knives and burned the effigy of a child while screaming, “Rohingyas, go back!” The
report adds that Facebook didn’t take down the post, “on the theory that it was
posted by groups claiming to be news organisations and wasn’t directly linked
to violence”. “The link may not have been direct, but in June 2019, dozens of
Rohingya homes were burned in Jammu, where the video and others like it were
shot,” it adds, offering a hyperlink to a report in The New York Times. words
like “parasites”, “rats”, and “rapists” to describe Bengali Muslims
