No immediate risk to Facebook for skipping Delhi Assembly hearing: Experts

Facebook executives skipping a hearing of the Delhi Assembly's 'Peace and Harmony' committee may not have any immediate impact on the social media giant, according to legal experts. The committee had summoned the executives this week to answer serious charges linked to the February Delhi riots. This was in connection with the complaints about the social media firm’s alleged "deliberate and intentional inaction to contain hateful content” in India. The firm had told the committee that it had already appeared before a parliamentary panel and that the subject came under the Centre. 

Legal experts said that there are no direct and immediate implications as the Delhi Assembly can issue strict directives or recommended action against Mark Zuckerberg-led Facebook. But ultimately it is the central government that has to take the action. 

Experts said that primarily, the skipping of the summons issued by the Delhi Assembly's panel on part of Facebook is to avoid getting into further political and legal hassles.

“Several Delhi AAP (Aam Aadmi Party) MLA's have demanded Facebook be implicated in the ‘Delhi Riots’ case and FIR (first information report) be registered against the company,” said a legal expert who wished to remain anonymous. “If that were to happen it would lead to further problems for the company due to the allegations of bias in favour of the ruling party in terms of content moderation. This may add further credibility to the hate speech moderation both at the national and international level,” he said. 

Facebook did not respond to the query on skipping the Delhi Assembly’s panel.

According to experts, from a legal perspective, attending the Parliamentary Standing Committee on IT and skipping the Delhi Assembly's panel for Peace and Harmony means that Facebook has decided to ensure that it is seen as co-operating at the national level while at the local level it may look the other way.

“Besides that, any regulatory legal action against Facebook would need to be initiated at the central government level and even for Delhi riots case the FIR that could be filed shall happen only at the instance of the home ministry,” said an expert.

Earlier, Facebook had said that its policies were applied globally without regard to political affiliation and the company did not profit from hate speech.

Some experts were of the view that for social media companies it is crucial that they develop robust community guidelines, with inputs from the community, and publicly share their updated and detailed content monitoring, moderation and take-down protocols. 

“Transparency is fundamental for any intermediary to operate in India and they should apply their rules consistently when it comes to taking down of harmful or illegal content,” said Kazim Rizvi, founder of The Dialogue, a tech policy think tank.

He said when the IT Act is reviewed, one of the key things that must be looked into is whether social media intermediaries are adequately and consistently enforcing their community guidelines. 

“Moreover, social media intermediaries must undertake an independent audit on the enforcement of their guidelines and policies and how effective they are,” said Rizvi.