NEW DELHI, Oct 6 - Social networking platform Facebook today said it will encourage engagement between people and political leaders on its platform for �free and fair election� and deploy task force to check hate speeches during polls.
�We want our platform to support free and fair election and positive civic engagement. We welcome people to engage with their political leaders but we don�t want people to abuse that,� Facebook vice president (Public Policy) Richard Allan told reporters.
The company has faced criticism for misuse of its platform for manipulating views during elections, spreading hate speech, etc.
Facebook has come up with a policy around hate speech under which it removes content that intend to spread hate speech and violence, etc.
Allan said that the abuse differs from country to country but principle is same, and Facebook is accordingly fine tuning its policy to address the issue.
�When we see elections coming up, obviously India is top of mind, biggest democracy in the world, so we have a task force working on that �security specialist, content specialist. We trying to understand what are possible the forms of abuse in India versus UK versus any other country,� he said.
Assembly elections have been announced in five States � Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Telangana and Mizoram.
Facebook blocks content using automation as well as through experts after scrutinising it. The social media major has developed its guidelines based on feedback from local community experts.
�We have a general policy that applies all across the world. As we have looked issues in different country, one of the things that came out was that there is a view that hate speech is directed against people in India, in particular, and Indians outside India also. They may direct hate speech against each other on the basis of ... caste,� Allan said. � PTI
