META Meta Platforms Inc

By Newley Purnell and Rajesh Roy 

NEW DELHI-- Facebook Inc. banned a politician from India's ruling party for violating its policies against hate speech, amid a growing political storm over its handling of extremist content on its platform.

The removal of the politician, T. Raja Singh, is an about-face for the company and one that will be politically tricky in India, its biggest market by number of users.

The Wall Street Journal reported last month that Facebook's head of public policy in the country, Ankhi Das, had opposed banning Mr. Singh under Facebook's "dangerous individual" prohibitions. In communications to Facebook staffers, she said punishing violations by politicians from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's party could hurt the company's business interests in the country.

At the same time, Facebook is under pressure around the world to crack down on alleged hate speech.

Lawmakers in India's opposition Congress party earlier called for hearings to examine whether Facebook has bent its own rules to favor Mr. Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.

In Facebook posts and public appearances, Mr. Singh, a member of Mr. Modi's BJP, has said Rohingya Muslim immigrants should be shot, called Muslims traitors and threatened to destroy mosques. He had hundreds of thousands of followers on Facebook and Instagram.

At least five Facebook profiles dedicated to Mr. Singh, which once had more than 300,000 followers, showed a message Thursday saying "This Content Isn't Available Right Now." Facebook groups devoted to him had also disappeared. His Instagram profile displayed a message saying "Sorry, this page isn't available. The link you followed may be broken, or the page may have been removed."

"We have banned Raja Singh from Facebook for violating our policy prohibiting those that promote or engage in violence and hate from having a presence on our platform," a Facebook spokesman told the Journal after Mr. Singh's accounts disappeared. "The process for evaluating potential violators is extensive and it is what led us to this decision."

Ms. Das didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. A Facebook spokesman previously acknowledged that Ms. Das had raised concerns about the political fallout from designating Mr. Singh a "dangerous individual, " but said her opposition wasn't the sole factor in the company's decision to let him remain on the platform.

Mr. Singh has defended the propriety of many of his statements and suggested some of the inflammatory material posted to his accounts was the result of a hacking. He didn't immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.

Mr. Singh's removal adds a new wrinkle to an already complicated situation for Facebook in India. Opposition politicians--and some Facebook employees--have alleged the company has turned a blind eye to hate speech from the BJP, while Mr. Modi's party has accused Facebook of censoring conservatives.

The Journal's article led some Facebook staff, such as members of the company's internal group for Muslim employees, called Muslim@, to press the company's leadership to review its handling of hate speech in India.

The Journal reported Sunday that Ms. Das made postings to an internal Facebook group over several years detailing her support for the BJP and disparaging its main rival, behavior some staff saw as conflicting with the company's pledge to remain neutral in elections around the world.

The Indian Parliament's information technology committee, headed by a prominent member of the opposition Congress party, held proceedings Wednesday behind closed doors to examine the topic of "safeguarding citizens' rights" and the "prevention of misuse of social/online news media platforms," according to a publicly available agenda. The agenda said the committee would hear the views of representatives of Facebook.

A Facebook spokeswoman didn't respond to a query Wednesday on which if any Facebook staff would appear.

Highlighting the difficult politics Facebook faces, the company also has come under fire from the BJP. Ravi Shankar Prasad, India's communications, electronics and information technology minister and a party member, addressed a letter Tuesday to Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg raising concerns about what he said were instances of "bias and inaction" against people who support a "right of center ideology." He called Facebook a "novel experiment" that shouldn't be allowed to be "hijacked."

A Facebook spokeswoman didn't respond to a request for comment Wednesday on Mr. Prasad's letter.

The Indian government in June banned dozens of Chinese mobile apps, including widely used TikTok and WeChat, after a border clash between troops from the two countries, citing cybersecurity concerns.

Facebook "tends to lean towards power, and there's inaction there," Nikhil Pahwa, founder of India-focused news service MediaNama who was set to participate in Wednesday's parliamentary proceedings, said on Twitter Friday.

"We've seen that in Myanmar (where FB had to apologize), in Philippines, and now allegedly in India. FB serves governments who can block it," he wrote. Mr. Pahwa declined to comment on what he planned to share with the committee Wednesday because the events were under privilege, he said.

A Facebook spokeswoman didn't respond to a request for comment on Mr. Pahwa's tweets. The company has acknowledged its slow response to a torrent of anti-Rohingya hate speech spread on its site in Myanmar, where brutal crackdowns by the country's security forces forced more than 700,000 Rohingya to flee across the border to Bangladesh in 2017.

Facebook last year took down some 200 accounts, groups and pages linked to a communications consultant who managed Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's social-media campaign, saying people behind the activity used fake accounts to misrepresent themselves.

Jeff Horwitz contributed to this article.

Write to Newley Purnell at newley.purnell@wsj.com and Rajesh Roy at rajesh.roy@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 03, 2020 00:30 ET (04:30 GMT)

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