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Standing committee on IT awaits green light to hear from Facebook whistleblower

Facebook’s handling of hate speech in India has been exposed by whistleblowers who’ve come forward in 2020 and 2021.

As the pressure to hold Facebook to account increases on democratic bodies across the world, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology has also submitted a request to speaker Om Birla to possibly summon Facebook whistleblower(s) before the committee. On November 1, committee chairman Shashi Tharoor tweeted that they approached Birla because in-person testimony by witnesses from abroad requires the speaker’s consent. Testimonies to parliamentary standing committees via video conferencing is not allowed, he added.  [embed]https://twitter.com/ShashiTharoor/status/1455150754356813827[/embed] Tharoor's tweet came after Facebook whistleblower Sophie Zhang tweeted that the Lok Sabha had not asked her to testify. Zhang later clarified that she meant the Delhi Assembly Committee but that the "overall point was still correct".  MediaNama has reached out to Tharoor's office to understand which whistleblower(s) the committee means to call and will update the report when a response is received. Earlier this month, reports of internal documents leaked by former employee-turned-whistleblower Frances Haugen revealed that the company was aware of misinformation and inflammatory posts in India but failed to take action. They also revealed that the company under-invests in non-English speaking countries. On October 25, digital rights group Internet Freedom Foundation had written to the IT committee asking them to summon Facebook whistleblowers and executives as part of an investigation into the platform. What the Facebook whistleblowers have revealed In an interview to Hindustan Times last month, Zhang said that during the Delhi assembly elections, a network of fake accounts was not removed as it was discovered that they were linked to the…

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I cover health technology for MediaNama but, really, love all things tech policy. Always willing to chat with a reader! Reach me at anushka@medianama.com

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