Tech giant Facebook is making several measures including distribution of content deemed to be hate speech, as part of its efforts to curb the spread of misinformation during elections in four Indian states of Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Assam, Kerala and Puducherry. The firm is putting on efforts to support and protect assembly elections. The company on Wednesday said that it is taking steps to enhance civic engagement, combat hate speech, limit misinformation and remove voter suppression.
"We recognise that there are certain types of content, such as hate speech, that could lead to imminent, offline harm...To decrease the risk of problematic content going viral in these states and potentially inciting violence ahead of or during the election, we will significantly reduce the distribution of content that our proactive detection technology identifies as likely hate speech or violence and incitement," it added.
Facebook will also temporarily decrease the distribution of content from accounts that have recently and repeatedly violated the company's policies, the social media giant said on Tuesday.
The company said that it continues to closely partner with election authorities, including setting up a high priority channel to remove content that breaks our rules or is against local law after receiving valid legal orders. It may also deploy technology to identify new words and phrases associated with hate speech and either remove posts with that language or reduce their distribution.
"In addition to our standard practice of removing accounts that repeatedly violate our Community Standards, we will also temporarily reduce the distribution of content from accounts that have recently and repeatedly violated our policies," it added.
The company is currently working with eight partners in India who are certified by the International Fact-Checking Network, to provide people with additional context about the content they're seeing on Facebook.
In addition to English, these eight partners fact-check in 11 Indian languages including Bengali, Tamil, Malayalam and Assamese.
Previously, Facebook has drawn flak for its approach of hate speech on the platform in the country. India is among the biggest markets for Facebook and its group companies, WhatsApp and Instagram. According to government data, India has 53 crores WhatsApp users, 41 crore Facebook users, and 21 crore users of Instagram.
In 2019, led by the industry body IAMAI, Facebook had set up a high priority channel with the Election Commission of India (ECI) for Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, to receive content-related escalations.
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"The Voluntary Code is applicable for this election as well," it said.
Pointing out that under its current Community Standards, Facebook eliminates certain slurs that it determines to be hate speech. "To complement that effort, we may deploy technology to identify new words and phrases associated with hate speech, and either remove posts with that language or reduce their distribution," it added.