Social Media Promote Tribalism in Pakistan

Social media newsfeeds are driven by users' profiles to reinforce their preferences and prejudices.  Newsfeeds are customized for each user. Any posts that don't fit these profiles don't get displayed. The result is increasing tribalism in the world. American and British intelligence agencies claim that Russian intelligence has used social media to promote divisions and manipulate public opinion in the West.  Like the US and the UK, Pakistan also has ethnic, sectarian and regional fault-lines that make it vulnerable to similar social media manipulation.  It is very likely that intelligence agencies of countries hostile to Pakistan are exploiting these divisions for their own ends. Various pronouncements by India's current and former intelligence and security officials reinforce this suspicion.

Tribalism:

All human are born with tribal instincts. People embrace group identities based on birthplace, language, region, sect, religion, nation, school, sports team, etc to define themselves.

Such group affiliations can give people a sense of belonging but they are sometimes also used to exclude others with the purpose of promoting hostility and violence. Social media platforms are being used both ways: To unite and to divide people.

Powerful new media such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and WhatsApp lend themselves for use as extensions of covert warfares carried out by intelligence agencies against nations they see as hostile.

Social Media Platforms:

Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter are powerful magnets for marketers,  extremist groups and intelligence agencies. They spend a lot of time and money on such platforms to reach and manipulate their targets.

Trolls and bots proliferate and societies become more deeply divided along political, ethnic, racial, religious, ideological and regional lines.  It is a problem that all nations in the world have to respond to.

Developed nations in Europe and North America with stronger institutions are generally more capable of dealing with the consequences of such divisions.  But the increasing social media penetration in less capable developing nations with weak institutions cause them to sometimes descend into violent riots. In a recent piece titled "Where Countries Are Tinderboxes and Facebook is a Match",  the New York Times has mentioned recent examples of riots and lynchings caused by social media posts in India, Indonesia, Mexico, Myanmar and Sri Lanka.

Brexit and Trump:

The unexpected result of Brexit, the British vote to leave the European Union, shocked many in the UK and Europe. It was soon followed by an even bigger shock with the unexpected election of Donald J. Trump as the President of the United States. Western intelligence agencies have now concluded that Russian intelligence agency sponsored trolls played a major role in manipulating the public opinion in the United Kingdom and the United States.

In February 2018, the US justice department indicted 13 Russians and three Russian entities in an alleged conspiracy to defraud the United States, including by tampering in the 2016 presidential election on behalf of Donald Trump and against Hillary Clinton, according to media reports.

The US DOJ indictment identified the Internet Research Agency, a St Petersburg-based group to which millions of impostor social media accounts have been traced, as a primary offender. The indictment also charged Russian individuals who funded the alleged election tampering conspiracy or who otherwise participated in it.

Some of the Russian social media posts were used to organize protests and counter protests in the United States on issues relating to race and religion.

US Senator Richard Burr confirmed that two groups converged outside the Islamic Da’wah Center of Houston in 2016, the Texas Tribune reported. One had gathered at the behest of the “Heart of Texas” Facebook group for a “Stop Islamification of Texas” rally, while the other, spurred on by the “United Muslims of America” Facebook page, had organized a counter-protest to “Save Islamic Knowledge.”

A Russian-sponsored Facebook ad appeared in late 2015 or early 2016, sources told CNN, and though it was meant to appear supportive of Black Lives Matter movement, it may also have conveyed the group as threatening to some white residents of those cities.

Indian Trolls:

It can be safely assumed that Russians are not alone in using social media against nations they see as hostile to them. It is also a safe bet that Indian intelligence agencies are most likely deploying their troll farms and bots to divide Pakistanis.

India's ruling BJP party has extensively used social media apps to spread rumors, innuendo,  fake news, outright lies and various forms of disinformation against anyone seen to be even mildly critical of their leader Narendra Modi. Their harshest abuse has been targeted at the Opposition Congress party leaders, various liberal individuals and groups, Muslims and Pakistanis.

Swati Chaturvedi, author of I Am a Troll, has cited many instances of hateful tweets from Modi-loving Hindu trolls, including Singer Abhijeet's lies to generate hatred against Muslims and Pakistan and BJP MP Hukum Singh's false claim of "Hindu exodus" from Kairana in western Uttar Pradesh blaming it on Muslims.

Vikram Sood, a former top spy in India, has elaborated on India's covert warfare options to target Pakistan in the following words: "The media is a favorite instrument, provided it is not left to the bureaucrats because then we will end up with some clumsy and implausible propaganda effort. More than the electronic and print media, it is now the internet and YouTube that can be the next-generation weapons of psychological war. Terrorists use these liberally and so should those required to counter terrorism."

In a 2013 speech at Sastra University, Indian Prime Minister Modi's National Security Advisor Ajit Doval revealed his covert war strategy against Pakistan as follows:  "How do you tackle Pakistan?.....We start working on Pakistan's vulnerabilities-- economic, internal security, political, isolating them internationally, it can be anything..... it can be defeating Pakistan's policies in Afghanistan...... You stop the terrorists by denying them weapons, funds and manpower. Deny them funds by countering with one-and-a-half times more funding. If they have 1200 crores give them 1800 crores and they are on our side...who are the Taliban fighting for? It's because they haven't got jobs or someone has misled them. The Taliban are mercenaries. So go for more of the covert thing (against Pakistan)..."

Summary: 

Social media newsfeeds are driven by users' profiles to reinforce their preferences and prejudices.  Newsfeeds are customized for each user. Any posts that don't fit these profiles don't get displayed. The result is increasing tribalism in the world. American and British intelligence agencies claim that Russian intelligence has used social media to manipulate public opinion in the West.  Like the US and the UK, Pakistan also has ethnic, sectarian and regional fault-lines that make it vulnerable to similar social media manipulation.  It is very likely that intelligence agencies of countries hostile to Pakistan are exploiting these divisions for their own ends. Various pronouncements by India's current and former intelligence and security officials reinforce this suspicion.

Here's a discussion on the subject in Urdu:

https://youtu.be/zuPMy65O6-s

Related Links:

Haq's Musings

South Asia Investor Review

Social Media: Blessing or Curse For Pakistan?

Planted Stories in Media

Indian BJP Troll Farm

Kulbhushan Jadhav Caught in Balochistan

The Story of Pakistan's M8 Motorway

Pakistan-China-Russia vs India-Japan-US

Riaz Haq's Youtube Channel

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Comment by Riaz Haq on October 18, 2018 at 6:45am

Fake #Iranian news site tweet provoked #Pakistan's nuclear threat against #Israel in 2016. https://thinkprogress.org/source-of-pakistani-nuclear-threat-agains... via @thinkprogress

In late 2016, then-Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Asif took to Twitter to threaten Israel with nuclear war. The threat, which was later deleted, was prompted by something Asif had apparently come across earlier while online: A post originally published on the “AWD News” site, claiming that the Israeli defense minister had himself threatened nuclear war against Pakistan.

For nearly two years, the sourcing behind “AWD News” remained unclear.

But thanks to today’s massive revelations from Twitter about fake Russian and Iranian accounts, ThinkProgress has learned that “AWD News” was part of a social media and fake news campaign out of Iran. As Lee Foster, an analyst with FireEye — the cyber-security company tasked with unearthing fake Iranian social media operations — told ThinkProgress, “AWD News” is “part of the same operation” that FireEye uncovered on Facebook a few months ago.

That is to say: A fake Iranian news site aimed at English-speakers convinced the Pakistani Defense Minister to issue a nuclear warning against Israel in late 2016.

Tracked to Iran
ThinkProgress’s confirmation of the links in Iran to “AWD News” came via Wednesday’s substantial revelations from Twitter, which published approximately one million tweets “potentially originating in Iran.” This disclosure followed Facebook’s August announcement that it had removed hundreds of fake accounts that originated in Iran.

While Facebook has still not released the names of those accounts, one of the pages identified was “Free Scotland 2014,” a popular pro-Scottish Independence account. As it is, a number of the Iranian tweets released on Wednesday also advocated for Scottish secession.

Comment by Riaz Haq on October 18, 2018 at 6:49am

#Twitter’s #Russian #troll problem: There’s good news and bad news. The #Iranian trolling was less effective than the Russian posts, with most tweets getting limited engagement. #Iran #Russia 
https://www.fastcompany.com/90253028/twitters-russian-troll-problem...

On Wednesday, Twitter released a collection of more than 10 million tweets related to thousands of accounts affiliated with Russia’s Internet Research Agency propaganda outfit, as well as hundreds more troll accounts, including many based in Iran.

The Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab took an advance look at the data and released a four-part report on its analysis. Among the lab’s findings:

Targeting both sides: Russian trolls targeting U.S. politics took on personas from both the left, including African American activists, and the right, including a white conservative male character using the name “Marlboro Man.” Their primary goal appears to have been to sow discord, rather than promote any particular side, presumably with a goal of weakening the United States. In some cases, they even posted anti-Russian content.
The Russian trolls were often effective, drawing tens of thousands of retweets on certain posts including from celebrity commentators like conservative Ann Coulter. When Twitter suspended many accounts linked to the group, they continued with other fake activist accounts.
Twitter’s efforts to take down accounts did help. The second wave of Russian troll accounts, now since taken down, posted much less than the original group. “Twitter’s suspension of over 2,500 Russian troll accounts in late 2017 disrupted the troll operation very significantly by suspending hundreds of its assets at the same time,” according to the report.
Self-interested: Iran’s trolling was mostly focused on promoting its own interests, including attacking regional rivals like Israel and Saudi Arabia. Some posts also attacked Trump and tried to woo supporters of Bernie Sanders.
Trolling isn’t easy: The Iranian trolling was less effective than the Russian posts, with most tweets getting limited engagement. This was partially due to posting styles less suited to the medium, according to the report. “Few of the accounts showed distinctive personalities: They largely shared online articles,” according to the report. “As such, they were a poor fit for Twitter, where personal comment tends to resonate more strongly than website shares.” Generally, many troll posts were ineffective, and “their operations were washed away in the firehose of Twitter.”
For now, there’s no reason to think political trolls are going away.

“Identifying future foreign influence operations, and reducing their impact, will demand awareness and resilience from the activist communities targeted, not just the platforms and the open source community,” according to the report.

Comment by Riaz Haq on October 19, 2018 at 7:51am

Foreign information ops: #Twitter data on suspect accounts shows #Pakistan mentioned in 5,652 tweets in documents related to suspect accounts originating from #Iran. #SocialMedia #trolls #weapons #India #disinformation #FakeNews https://tribune.com.pk/story/1828588/3-foreign-twitter-accounts-beh...

Social networking website Twitter on Wednesday released a vast cache of data related to accounts deemed involved in ‘information operations’ on their servers since 2016.

The released data is part of an internal investigation by the social media giant into allegations of foreign meddling on their website, according to a statement released by the company in a blog post.

In September, Twitter chief Jack Dorsey had appeared before a US Senate Intelligence Committee in Washington to brief lawmakers regarding efforts the company was making to combat coordinated misinformation campaigns.

The Express Tribune has performed an analysis on parts of the dataset shared by the social media website.

Pakistan is mentioned in 5,652 tweets in some documents related to suspect accounts originating from Iran.

According to Twitter, the locations with which the tweets were identified had been the ‘self-reported locations’ that the users had posted.

Interestingly, most of the content flagged as suspicious was apparently coming from Brazil. France, Turkey, Iran and the US were also featured on the list.

The archive showed websites that suspected users had tweeted about most frequently. According to figures, AWD News was on top of this list, with whatsupic and libertyfrontpress following close behind.

A number of these websites, including AWD News, have been already identified as platforms used to generate fake news.

Twitter released an accompanying list of web addresses that were shared widely by users with intent to spread misinformation.

These links are mostly from AWD News and libertyfrontpress, and can help the public understand why certain stories are shared more than others by suspect groups.

The Express Tribune went through some of these links in order to separate fake stories from real stories.

http://www.awdnews.com/political/10404-cia-predict-third-terrorist-...

Headline: CIA predict third terrorist attack after Sidney and Pakistan in USA in 3 days

The link shared above is no longer available. British newspaper The Guardian has already identified AWD as a fake news site. Wayback Machine screenshot shows that the article is full of spelling mistakes and the story has not been credibly sourced. The URL reproduced above was published on December 16, 2014, and tweeted 3,619 times.

http://www.7sabah.com.tr/haber/6876/pakistan-genelkurmay-baskani-is...

Google translation of headline: Pakistan Chief of Staff: We are not in Israel in 12 Minutes!

The article linked above shows pictures of former Chief of Army Staff Raheel Sharif, and most sites quoting this also claim Joint Chiefs of Staff General Zubair Mahmood Hayat spoke to AWD News. This URL was published on October 31, 2016, and tweeted 72 times.

http://whatsupic.com/news-politics-world/1476905223.html

Headline: We can destroy Israel in ‘less than 12 minutes’: Pakistani commander

This story was tweeted out 67 times and originally published on October 19, 2016.

http://www.awdnews.com/index/saudi-arabia-bought-depleted-uranium-w...

Headline: Saudi Arabia has bought depleted uranium weapons from Pakistan and delivered it to Syrian rebel groups”

Comment by Riaz Haq on November 8, 2018 at 10:52am

#Facebook Admits It Was Used to Incite #Violence Against #Rohingya in #Myanmar. It faces scrutiny from lawmakers who say it is not doing enough. Facebook’s experiments have helped to amplify fake stories and violence inother countries, including #SriLanka. https://nyti.ms/2yVAO5X

Facebook has long promoted itself as a tool for bringing people together to make the world a better place. Now the social media giant has acknowledged that in Myanmar it did the opposite, and human rights groups say it has a lot of work to do to fix that.

Facebook failed to prevent its platform from being used to “foment division and incite offline violence” in the country, one of its executives said in a post on Monday, citing a human rights report commissioned by the company.

“We agree that we can and should do more,” the executive, Alex Warofka, a Facebook product policy manager, wrote. He also said Facebook would invest resources in addressing the abuse of its platform in Myanmar that the report outlines.

The report, by Business for Social Responsibility, or BSR, which is based in San Francisco, paints a picture of a company that was unaware of its own potential for doing harm and did little to figure out the facts on the ground.

The report details how Facebook unwittingly entered a country new to the digital era and still emerging from decades of censorship, all the while plagued by political and social divisions.

But the report fails to look closely at how Facebook employees missed a crescendo of posts and misinformation that helped to fuel modern ethnic cleansing in Myanmar.

The report recommends that Facebook increase enforcement of policies for content posted on its platform; exercise greater transparency with data that shows its progress; and engage with civil society and officials in Myanmar.

Some Facebook detractors criticized the company on Tuesday for releasing the report on the eve of the midterm elections in the United States, when the attention of the news media and many of Facebook’s most vocal critics was elsewhere. Human rights groups said Facebook’s pledge needed to be followed up with more concrete actions.

“There are a lot of people at Facebook who have known for a long time that the company should have done more to prevent the gross misuse of its platform in Myanmar,” said Matthew Smith of Fortify Rights, a nonprofit human rights organization that focuses on Southeast Asia.

Comment by Riaz Haq on November 13, 2019 at 7:53pm

Uncovered: 265 coordinated fake local media outlets serving Indian interests


https://www.disinfo.eu/2019/11/13/uncovered:-265-coordinated-fake-l...


Over 265 fake local news sites in more than 65 countries are managed by an Indian influence network.



How could you know that your local news website, such as newyorkmorningtelegraph.com, thedublingazette.com, or timesofportugal.com serves Indian governmental interests?



Here are some findings from these websites:

Most of them are named after an extinct local newspaper or spoof real media outlets;
They republish content from several news agencies (KCNA, Voice of America, Interfax);
Coverage of the same Indian-related demonstrations and events;
Republications of anti-Pakistan content from the described Indian network (including EP Today, 4NewsAgency, Times Of Geneva, New Delhi Times);
Most websites have a Twitter account as well.
One may wonder: why have they created these fake media outlets? From analysing the content and how it is shared, we found several arguments to do so:

Influence international institutions and elected representatives with coverage of specific events and demonstrations;
Provide NGOs with useful press material to reinforce their credibility and thus be impactful;
Add several layers of media outlets that quote and republish one another, making it harder for the reader to trace the manipulation, and in turn (sometimes) offer a “mirage” of international support;

Comment by Riaz Haq on November 13, 2019 at 9:16pm

EU Disinfo Lab researchers believe the network’s real purpose was to act as a way to disseminate coordinated anti-Pakistan propaganda that coincided with real-world anti-Pakistan demonstrations taking place in Europe.

The demonstrations were organized by groups such as the European Organization for Pakistani Minorities and Pakistani Women’s Human Rights Organization, which have been shown to use the same online infrastructure as the fake news network.


A Shadowy Indian Company Co-Opted Dead Newspapers to Spread Propaganda
Researchers think it was an influence campaign aimed to sway lawmakers in Europe in favor of Indian interests in Kashmir.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xwe993/a-shadowy-indian-company-...

Comment by Riaz Haq on January 4, 2020 at 7:40pm

#BJP resorts to #fake 'lonely woman' on Twitter to drum up support for #CAA. #AmitShah asking people to give missed calls to show support for the Citizenship Amendment Act — is now being shared by many Twitter accounts. #Modi #fakenews #Hindutva https://www.huffingtonpost.in/entry/bjp-lonely-woman-twitter-caa-su...


The Narendra Modi government has made clear that it won’t “budge an inch” on the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) amid non-stop protests across the country against the discriminatory law.

The BJP has gone to many lengths to get support for the CAA, including getting Jaggi Vasudev, a self-styled guru, to speak for it and dismiss the protests. It has set up a phone number asking people to give missed calls to support the CAA. And now, several accounts on Twitter are sharing said phone number, pretending to be a lonely, bored women asking people to call the number. Yep, you read that right.

Not just that, there are other Twitter accounts that claim you will get a free Netflix subscription for 6 months if you call the number. There are others who are claiming pepple need to urgently call them on the number.

This BJP ploy, to “show” numbers in support of the CAA, was pointed out by Twitter user @samjawed65 who took screenshots of all the people claiming to be lonely and asking people to call this BJP number.

A quick look on Twitter reveals that this particular number has been tweeted out by top leaders of the BJP including Amit Shah and BJP MP Shobha Karandlaje. The Karnataka BJP Twitter handle also shared this number.

Comment by Riaz Haq on February 27, 2020 at 7:51pm

#Facebook, #Google, #Twitter Rebel Against #Pakistan’s #SocialMedia Rules. Companies pressure and lawsuits from local civil libertarian forced govt to retreat. Law still on the books, but Pakistani officials pledged this week to review the regulations. https://nyti.ms/2uF4GF0

When Pakistan’s government unveiled some of the world’s most sweeping rules on internet censorship this month, global internet companies like Facebook, Google and Twitter were expected to comply or face severe penalties — including the potential shutdown of their services.

Instead, the tech giants banded together and threatened to leave the country and its 70 million internet users in digital darkness.

Through a group called the Asia Internet Coalition, they wrote a scathing letter to Pakistan’s prime minister, Imran Khan. In it, the companies warned that “the rules as currently written would make it extremely difficult for AIC Members to make their services available to Pakistani users and businesses.”

Their public rebellion, combined with pressure and lawsuits from local civil libertarians, forced the government to retreat. The law remains on the books, but Pakistani officials pledged this week to review the regulations and undertake an “extensive and broad-based consultation process with all relevant segments of civil society and technology companies".


“Because Pakistan does not have any law of data protection, international internet firms are reluctant to comply with the rules,” said Usama Khilji, director of Bolo Bhi, an internet rights organization based in Islamabad, the country’s capital.

The standoff over Pakistan’s digital censorship law, which would give regulators the power to demand the takedown of a wide range of content, is the latest skirmish in an escalating global battle. Facebook, Google and other big tech companies, which have long made their own rules about what is allowed on their services, are increasingly tangling with national governments seeking to curtail internet content that they consider harmful, distasteful or simply a threat to their power.

India is expected to unveil new censorship guidelines any day now, including a requirement that encrypted messaging services like WhatsApp tell the government how specific messages moved within their networks. The country has also proposed a new data privacy law that would restrict the activities of tech companies while exempting the government from privacy rules.

Vietnam passed its own cybersecurity law in 2018, with similar provisions to what Pakistan passed. Singapore recently began using its rules against “fake news” to go after critics and opposition figures by forcing social networks like Facebook to either take down certain posts or add the government’s response to them.

The unified resistance by Facebook, Google, Twitter and other tech companies in Pakistan is highly unusual. Companies often protest these types of regulations, but they rarely threaten to actually leave a country. Google pulled its search engine out of China in 2010 rather than submit to government censorship of search results, but LinkedIn agreed to self-censor its content when it entered China in 2014 and Apple acceded to Chinese demands to remove apps that customers had used to bypass the country’s Great Firewall.

Comment by Riaz Haq on August 14, 2020 at 9:36pm

Before #India’s elections in 2019, #Facebook took down inauthentic pages tied to #Pakistan’s military & #Indian Opposition Congress party, but it didn't remove #BJP accounts spewing anti-#Muslim #hate & #fakenews. Why? FB executive Ankhi Das intervened. https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-hate-speech-india-politics-muslim-hindu-modi-zuckerberg-11597423346

In 2017, Ms. Das wrote an essay, illustrated with Facebook’s thumbs-up logo, praising Mr. Modi. It was posted to his website and featured in his mobile app.

On her own Facebook page, Ms. Das shared a post from a former police official, who said he is Muslim, in which he called India’s Muslims traditionally a “degenerate community” for whom “Nothing except purity of religion and implementation of Shariah matter.”

---------

In Facebook posts and public appearances, Indian politician T. Raja Singh has said Rohingya Muslim immigrants should be shot, called Muslims traitors and threatened to raze mosques.

Facebook Inc. employees charged with policing the platform were watching. By March of this year, they concluded Mr. Singh not only had violated the company’s hate-speech rules but qualified as dangerous, a designation that takes into account a person’s off-platform activities, according to current and former Facebook employees familiar with the matter.

---

Yet Mr. Singh, a member of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist party, is still active on Facebook and Instagram, where he has hundreds of thousands of followers. The company’s top public-policy executive in the country, Ankhi Das, opposed applying the hate-speech rules to Mr. Singh and at least three other Hindu nationalist individuals and groups flagged internally for promoting or participating in violence, said the current and former employees.

Ms. Das, whose job also includes lobbying India’s government on Facebook’s behalf, told staff members that punishing violations by politicians from Mr. Modi’s party would damage the company’s business prospects in the country, Facebook’s biggest global market by number of users, the current and former employees said.

---------------
India is a vital market for Facebook, which isn’t allowed to operate in China, the only other nation with more than one billion people. India has more Facebook and WhatsApp users than any other country, and Facebook has chosen it as the market in which to introduce payments, encryption and initiatives to tie its products together in new ways that Mr. Zuckerberg has said will occupy Facebook for the next decade. In April, Facebook said it would spend $5.7 billion on a new partnership with an Indian telecom operator to expand operations in the country—its biggest foreign investment.

-----------
Another BJP legislator, a member of Parliament named Anantkumar Hegde, has posted essays and cartoons to his Facebook page alleging that Muslims are spreading Covid-19 in the country in a conspiracy to wage “Corona Jihad.” Human-rights groups say such unfounded allegations, which violate Facebook’s hate speech rules barring direct attacks on people based on “protected characteristics” such as religion, are linked to attacks on Muslims in India, and have been designated as hate speech by Twitter Inc.

While Twitter has suspended Mr. Hegde’s account as a result of such posts, prompting him to call for an investigation of the company, Facebook took no action until the Journal sought comment from the company about his “Corona Jihad” posts. Facebook removed some of them on Thursday. Mr. Hegde didn’t respond to a request for comment.

------------

Within hours of the videotaped message, which Mr. Mishra uploaded to Facebook, rioting broke out that left dozens of people dead. Most of the victims were Muslims, and some of their killings were organized via Facebook’s WhatsApp

Comment by Riaz Haq on August 30, 2020 at 9:14pm

Riaz Haq has left a new comment on your post "Two of 265 India-Linked Anti-Pakistan Fake News Si...":

#Facebook #India exec Ankhi Das supported #Modi, saying a day before #Modi's victory in 2014: “We lit a fire to his social media campaign and the rest is of course history..it’s taken thirty years of grassroots work to rid India of state socialism finally" https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-executive-supported-indias-mo...

Ms. Das made her sentiments on the race clear. When a fellow staffer noted in response to one of her internal posts that the BJP’s primary opponent, the Indian National Congress, had a larger following on Facebook than Mr. Modi’s individual page, Ms. Das responded: “Don’t diminish him by comparing him with INC. Ah well—let my bias not show!!!”

Internally, Ms. Das presented the company’s work with the BJP as benefiting Facebook as well.

“We’ve been lobbying them for months to include many of our top priorities,” she said of the BJP’s official platform, noting that the document was littered with the word “technology” and appeared to embrace Facebook’s desire for an expanded but less heavily regulated internet. “Now they just need to go and win the elections,” she wrote.
----------


The (Ankhi Das) posts cover the years 2012 to 2014 and were made to a Facebook group designed for employees in India, though it was open to anyone in the company globally who wanted to join. Several hundred Facebook employees were members of the group during those years.

Ms. Das is already at the center of a political outcry in India over Facebook’s handling of hate speech on the platform, following a Journal article earlier this month. That article showed that Ms. Das earlier this year opposed moves to ban from the platform a politician from Mr. Modi’s party whose anti-Muslim comments violated Facebook’s rules.

From its earliest days when it morphed from a college social network into a global political force, Facebook has presented itself as a neutral platform that doesn’t favor any party or viewpoint. The company’s head of global affairs, Nick Clegg, has said the company’s role is to provide the court, not “pick up a racket and start playing.” Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly stressed his position that the company should remain politically neutral, including this year when he defended his decision not to act against provocative posts from President Trump.

Facebook on Tuesday said the posts by Ms. Das don’t show inappropriate bias.

“These posts are taken out of context and don’t represent the full scope of Facebook’s efforts to support the use of our platform by parties across the Indian political spectrum,” spokesman Andy Stone said.

Ms. Das didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment. She has apologized to colleagues for sharing a post described in the previous Journal article, in which she approvingly reposted an essay from a former Indian police official who said the country’s Muslims have historically been “a degenerate community.”

As in the U.S., Facebook’s India-based public policy team serves two functions. Staffers make and enforce the platform’s rules about what is and isn’t allowed to be posted, and they represent the company’s interests before governments. Critics both outside the company and inside have increasingly raised concerns about how those roles may conflict.

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