New Delhi: Reporters Without Borders, the global organisation that attempts to safeguard the right to freedom of information, has filed a lawsuit in France accusing Facebook of leading deceptive commercial practices by allowing hate speech and false information to be shared on the platform in spite of promises of a safe online environment.
Reporters Without Borders, known by its French acronym RSF, alleges through the lawsuit that Facebook “allows disinformation and hate speech to flourish on its network (hatred in general and hatred against journalists), contrary to the claims made in its terms of service and through its ads.”
In a press release, RSF has said that the spread of hatred through Facebook is a “large-scale, unprecedented phenomenon.”
The choice of France as a country to file the lawsuit in, the release says, is triggered by the fact that “consumer law is especially well suited to deal with the issue” and the large number of Facebook consumers.
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“As Facebook’s terms of service are the same all over the world, a court ruling in France on its deceptive practices has the potential for a global impact. RSF is considering filing similar lawsuits in other countries,” the release says.
RSF’s lawsuit argues that in its ‘terms of service’, Facebook undertakes that it will exercise professional diligence in providing “a safe, secure and error-free environment,” one that cannot be used to “share anything (…) that is unlawful, misleading, discriminatory or fraudulent”.
In its Community Standards too, it promises to “significantly reduce the distribution” of false information – a claim it repeated in a French advertisement on reliable information-sharing during the pandemic.
However, the reality goes against the French consumer code, which seeks to penalise false claims or promises, RSF says.
Citing several reports, the RSF says that Facebook has developed into a centre of “vaccine conspiracy theories”.
“According to the German Marshall Fund (GMF), Facebook posts linking to deceptive sites resulted in 1.2 billion interactions in the fourth quarter of 2020. A UNESCO report published in 2020 named Facebook as the “least safe” social media platform.”
RSF also cited how the Facebook page of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo was flooded with insults, threats and calls for violence coinciding with the start of the trial of those accused of complicity in the massacre at the magazine’s headquarters in January 2015.
Journalists on the French TV programme Quotidien and the French regional newspaper L’Union, were also similarly targeted through Facebook.
RSF also says that Facebook has been remarkably lax in flagging misinformation on COVID-19.
“For example, five different posts of the conspiracy theory video Hold-up – five of the many available on Facebook – were viewed more than 4.5 million times in two months.
“Another film, Manigances-19, containing numerous falsehoods about COVID-19 according to AFP analysis, was viewed an average of nearly 4,000 times a day for two months.”
Facebook in India has been criticised for favouritism to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and allowing content espousing violence by rightwing Hindutva groups to remain on the site. In October 2020, top Facebook India official Ankhi Das quit the social media giant after it was alleged that she interfered in the company’s content moderation policy to avoid ruining its relationship with the BJP.