Facebook has decoded the writing on the wall
3 min read . Updated: 02 Sep 2020, 09:52 PM ISTThe company seems keen to get out of the political morass its uneven approach to free speech has pushed it into. But its new self-regulation model may not help. The rules are for us to set
Facebook has rarely faced the sort of heat that it has in India lately, with its social media interventions being slammed by political parties on both sides of the aisle, and it seems unlikely that its efforts to shield itself will lessen the censure. On Tuesday, the US-based company issued a notification to users that it would remove or curtail “access to your content, services or information if we determine that doing so is necessary to avoid or mitigate adverse legal or regulatory impacts to Facebook". This Terms of Service update is scheduled to take effect from 1 October. As far as its legislative exposure goes, it is Australia’s initiative to make it pay local publishers for their content that appears to have worried it. But the prospect of regulatory strictures in larger markets, such as India, could not have escaped its management. Facebook’s latest attempt at insuring itself through tighter self-regulation does not weaken the case for external oversight. Under its updated usage terms, it has given itself overarching discretion that would let it exercise even more authority over what can or cannot be aired on its online platforms. It already has a glaring record of arbitrary action.
Indeed, Facebook has often been accused of a zealous pursuit of financial objectives at the cost of those whose interests its apps were intended to serve. A US-based daily recently ran an exposé of what seemed like its readiness to shrug off its own hate-speech rules in India, so as to please some members of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). This revelation not only set off a slanging match between the party and the opposition, it also resulted in its local managers being summoned by a parliamentary panel headed by Congress leader Shashi Tharoor. The questioning session, held on Wednesday, was expected to make Facebook squirm, express regret and mend its ways. If the Congress had charged it with a rightist bias, the BJP accused it of a leftist tilt. On the eve of the event, Union communications and information technology minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had shot off a scathing letter to its chief Mark Zuckerberg, alleging that the platform had been “hijacked by a vested lobby" that was trying to impose its views on others. The minister also charged it with an effort made during our 2019 general election to delete or minimize the reach of material supportive of “the right-of-centre ideology".
It should worry Facebook that its influence on politics is seen as scandalous by parties across India’s political spectrum. The company’s top brass may yet be tempted to dismiss this as just another brouhaha that can be put down to the nature of the social media beast. It should not. And, even if it does, its response should have no bearing on how we tackle the problem. We have in place a constitutional order, complete with sovereign laws. To be sure, our provisions on freedom of speech do have some grey areas that make space for interpretation and lend themselves to gross misapplication. However, a functional political system should be able to frame a set of rules for social media expression. These could be thrown open for public debate and then amended to the satisfaction of all stakeholders before adoption. Both the Congress and BJP have professed deep unease over what gets posted online. Perhaps we could hope for a domestic consensus on a rulebook that everyone considers fair. A country acquainted by history with the divide-and-rule tactics of a foreign power should be especially wary of divisive influences, online or otherwise.
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