Social-Media
Facebook India's controversial head of policy resigned
India's ET Now reports that Ankhi Das, India's Facebook policy leader, resigned her position after months of escalating pressure from activists. Facebook said Das was leaving the organization to support the public service.
Ankhi has been one of our first employees in India and has played a key role in the company's growth and services over the last 9 years, said Ajit Mohan, Facebook's Managing Director for India. For the last two years, she has been part of my leadership team, a position in which she has made enormous contributions. We are thankful for her service and wish her all the best for the future.
Facebook India has struggled to respond to the increasing threat of hate speech against Muslims, frequently followed by awful acts of mob violence. Facebook has been reluctant to take action against many of the Hindu nationalist groups responsible for violence, leading to fears that the company has been making the errors that followed similar violence in Myanmar and Sri Lanka.
The official line is that Ankhi Das is leaving to pursue her 'personal interest in public service.' Her exit comes months after she was under fire for not applying hate speech rules to posts by BJP leader Raja Singh. FB subsequently published a post that it's non-partisan & open. https://t.co/absavgzFAe
— Chandra R. Srikanth (@chandrarsrikant) October 27, 2020
In September, a coalition of human rights organizations sent an open letter calling for Das 's resignation in response to the increasing threat of violence. Facebook should not be complicit in further off-line abuse, much less another genocide, but the trend of negligence shown by the organization is imprudent to the point of complicity, read the document. [We] write to encourage you to take immediate steps to resolve the bias of Facebook India and its inability to address hazardous material in India. The groups have called for an internal Facebook analysis of the problem to be carried out by the California offices of the company, rather than in India, where Das may have more control.
Das often courted criticism in his personal conduct, aligning himself with the ruling BJP party, and openly challenging the critics. In August, she lodged a criminal complaint against a group of critics, claiming that their posts constituted criminal harassment.
The accusation was serious enough to attract fire from the International Committee for the Safety of Journalists, which saw the allegations as a possible challenge to the free press.
In a farewell note to the staff, received by TechCrunch, Das praised Facebook and its founder. Thank you, Mark, for making something amazing for the whole world, Das wrote. I hope that I have represented you and the business well.
