After a damaging leak of internal company records triggered calls for regulatory actions against Meta, independent researchers are now claiming that Facebook is stifling a report they had been commissioned to submit on its human rights impact in India, as per a report in the Wall Street Journal. Meta has refuted the claims saying that they were being thorough with the report and not trying to meet an 'arbitrary deadline'. However, researchers claim that Facebook's human rights team, which oversees the work on the report, has been raising technical objections, narrowing the scope, etc., in an attempt to stifle the report. We were approached by the company to provide factual evidence of toxic content and their thoughts on Facebook use in India, Dr. Ritumbra Mauvie, one of the researchers on the project, told MediaNama. Facebook in India faces renewed scrutiny from the government, legislative committees, and lawmakers following recent revelations by employee-turned-whistleblower Frances Haugen. Allegations of the researchers According to the WSJ report, researchers alleged the following actions are being taken up through Foley Hoag, a New York-based law firm hired by Facebook to take charge of the report. Moving of goalposts: Foley Hoag challenged the content flagged as hate speech by one of the human rights organisations, Stichting The London Story (TLS), behind the report. The law firm asked them whether they had first reported it on Facebook and then asked them if they reported it within specific time frames, in a shifting of goalposts. "In context of hate speech or…
