Rohingya refugees move Delhi High Court against Facebook to stop hateful content before 2024 elections

Two Rohingya refugees have filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in Delhi High Court seeking directions to social networking platform Facebook (now Meta) to stop hateful and inflammatory content against the Rohingya community..Directions have been sought to Facebook to halt the use of virality and ranking algorithms which encourage hate speech and violence against minority communities..The petition is likely to be heard by the High Court later this month.The petitioners are Mohammad Hamim and Kawsar Mohammed. They fled persecution in Myanmar and reached India in July 2018 and March 2022 respectively. .In their plea, filed through Advocate Kawalpreet Kaur, they have alleged that misinformation, harmful content and posts originating in India targeting Rohingya refugees are widespread on Facebook and there is evidence to show that the platform is intentionally not acting against such posts. In fact, its algorithms promote such content, the plea stressed. It argued that Facebook was extensively used to dehumanise the Rohingya community in Myanmar and as the 2024 general elections draw close, there is a high risk of widespread harmful content and misinformation originating on the platform which can result in violence against the community.“The presence of Rohingya refugees in India is a highly politicized matter, and as such they are disproportionately targeted with harmful content on Facebook painting the group as a threat to India, often referring to the group as 'terrorists', 'infiltrators' and exaggerating the numbers of Rohingya that have fled to India,” the plea contended.It referred to a 2019 study by Equality Lab into hate speech on Facebook in India which found that 6 percent of the Islamophobic posts were specifically anti-Rohingya even though the Rohingya comprised only 0.02 percent of India’s Muslim population..The plea said that striking similarities have been noted in the language being employed on Facebook to target the Rohingya in India.It asserted that not acting against users promoting hate and not taking proactive steps to control the hateful content poses a threat to the lives of Rohingyas and, therefore, violates their right to life under Article 21 of the Constitution. The petitioners further said that Facebook is in violation of Section 79(3) of the Information Technology Act read with Rule 3 of the Information Technology (Intermediaries Guidelines) Rules 2011 which deals with the due diligence to be observed by an intermediary while discharging its duties..Hamim and Mohammed, therefore, seek directions to Meta to suspend accounts promoting hate against the Rohingya community and to openly report how it applies its content moderation policies on the content flagged by users.“It [Meta] must also provide an India-specific report on hate speech content moderation. This report must clearly identify the content moderation decision trajectories where content is removed and where content is not removed. This report should also include specific numbers on how many users flagged reports were received, what part of user flagged reports were removed, how many of these were appealed and what amount of content was removed during the process of appeal and under what categories,” the plea demanded.