You are reading it here first: Ahead of state elections in Assam this year, Facebook's internal team flagged BJP politician Satya Ranjan Borah's social media profiles for 'inflammatory anti-Muslim content', Facebook's internal documents show. Borah's profile, including posts that can be qualified as hate speech, remain active on the platform as of publishing this report. Besides Borah, the team flagged Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma's profile, before he was elected, for spreading a conspiracy against Muslims, documents show. Assamese Online was also flagged for targeting the Bengali-speaking Hindu population in Assam. Both pages still remain active on the platform. Facebook's failure to regulate hate speech in India, especially from members of the ruling party, has been reported on extensively. The striking revelation from these documents is that Facebook was unwilling to take action on hate speech even after employees flagged them internally. Threats flagged by Facebook's internal team ahead of Assam elections Facebook's report, titled 'CVIGI India Insights Report' , warned about problematic content ahead of the Assam elections: Within the context of heightened electoral tensions, the combination of these competing nationalisms could result in a surge of problematic content with the potential to incite offline violence against minorities — Facebook's internal document (emphasis ours) The document was included in disclosures made to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and provided to Congress in redacted form by Frances Haugen’s legal counsel. The redacted versions received by Congress were reviewed by a consortium of news organisations, including MediaNama. Here are the key…
