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Story

13 May 2024

India: CSOs find Meta hosts ads promoting harmful content ahead of elections

In April 2024, the civil society organizations the London Story, Ekō, and India Civil Watch International (ICWI) published the report titled "Slander, Lies, and Incitement: India’s million dollar election meme network.” The report claims that Meta's failure in content moderation policies is facilitating serious harm in India in relation to the current elections, revealing a troubling pattern of discrimination, misinformation, and hate speech targeting various groups within India’s political landscape. According to the findings, Meta by its content moderation failures has facilitated:

  • the proliferation of hate speech and the targeting of Muslims, while narratives seeking to reshape India into a Hindu nation are promoted, marginalizing other religious communities.
  • the targeting of women lawmakers, journalists, and activists as anti-India.
  • the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) utilization of the platform to employ aggressive rhetoric, including threats of violence, likening political opponents to viruses.
  • the proliferation of 36 ads, accumulating over 65 million impressions, that potentially violate Indian election laws, disseminating hate speech, Islamophobia, communal violence, and misinformation.
  • a coordinated network led by a public page named Ulta Chashma, along with nine other pages sharing misleading claims and Islamophobic rhetoric content, hashtags, and ad payments, amassing over 10.53 million interactions and 34.64 million video views on Facebook within 90 days.

Furthermore, the report urges Meta to promptly implement the recommendations proposed by more than 30 Indian and international civil society organizations. These recommendations include enforcing the political advertising silence period and taking measures to respect human rights during India's elections, as communicated in an open letter to Meta in April 2024.

The Business & Human Rights Resource Centre invited Meta to respond to the allegations and to share the steps the company has taken to implement the civil society recommendations. Meta did respond.

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