Hundreds of people from various backgrounds irrespective of their socio-economic sections gathered in eight major U.S. cities over the weekend to protest “Facebook allowing hate speech to be freely posted in India, resulting in persecution, physical attacks and killings of members of non-Hindu minority religions.”
The protests, organized by India Genocide Watch, demanded Facebook’s founder-CEO Mark Zuckerberg end his company’s alleged “complicity in extreme Hindu right-wing incitement to violence, proliferating on Facebook and WhatsApp”, according to an IGW press release.
Streets in Atlanta, Chicago, Charlotte, Houston, Los Angeles, San Diego, Seattle and San Francisco’s Menlo Park, where Facebook is headquartered, have witnessed the protests of the Indian diaspora.
“Facebook provided a platform for the right-wing hate-mongering elements to flourish. Had it taken stringent action on fake accounts things could have been different,” Elyas Mohammed, a protester at Charlotte, North Carolina, was quoted as saying.
Shakeib Mashhood, a protester at Houston, Texas, said: “Facebook is becoming a tool to spread hate In India, which is very outrageous. More concerning is that Facebook knew that this was happening but it did not take any action. They did not block it.”
India is Facebook’s biggest market, with at least 340 million Facebook accounts and 400 million WhatsApp users. “The social media giant has increasingly prioritized business interests in India, failing to act against the tsunami of hate and violence enabled by its platforms,” IGW alleged.
