Facebook dithered in curbing divisive user content in India

[dalton99a]

https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-technology-business-media-religion-9255fdedb5e238bd3ec74781f50d35f4

Facebook dithered in curbing divisive user content in India
By SHEIKH SAALIQ and KRUTIKA PATHI

...

Back in February 2019 and ahead of a general election when concerns of misinformation were running high, a Facebook employee wanted to understand what a new user in the country saw on their news feed if all they did was follow pages and groups solely recommended by the platform’s itself.

The employee created a test user account and kept it live for three weeks, a period during which an extraordinary event shook India — a militant attack in disputed Kashmir had killed over 40 Indian soldiers, bringing the country to near war with rival Pakistan.

Seemingly benign and innocuous groups recommended by Facebook quickly morphed into something else altogether, where hate speech, unverified rumors and viral content ran rampant.

The recommended groups were inundated with fake news, anti-Pakistan rhetoric and Islamophobic content. Much of the content was extremely graphic.

...

[RockRaven]

1. Of course it did. "Don't compromise revenue for the sake of morality or human life" is not

merely their default position, it is their core value, their underlying ethos, their sole motivation.

[Scrivener7]

3. Don't be silly. They didn't dither. They did a careful analysis about whether the loss of life and

potential loss of life was worth the profit it would glean.

They concluded, given the money generated, the deaths were no problem.

Like they do.