The latest in the series of leaks from the internal documents of Facebook is the one from its largest market, India, where it apparently did little to block the hate content that often ignited violence. It now emerges that the whistleblower, Frances Haugen, was especially interested in Facebook’s response to hate speech in India. She chose a Wall Street Journal reporter to release the secret documents because of his previous work on this subject.

Jeff Horwitz, who writes on tech industry for the WSJ, had reported in December last year about Facebook not doing enough to filter hate speech from Hindu right-wing groups in India, as it feared any action may backfire on the platform and its staff in the country: https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-india-facebook-fears-crackdown-on-hate-groups-could-backfire-on-its-staff-11607871600

When Haugen, a data scientist at Facebook who found her firm was always putting profits before public safety, wanted to leak thousands of internal documents, she turned to Horwitz. They first met in California within days of the publication of that India report. She has said she liked that Horwitz “seemed thoughtful, and she liked that he’d written about Facebook’s role in transmitting violent Hindu nationalism in India, a particular interest of hers.” She also believed that the reporter would not treat her just as another source but support her as a person. “I auditioned Jeff for a while and one of the reasons I went with him is that he was less sensationalistic than other choices I could have made”: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/24/business/media/facebook-leak-frances-haugen.html

Based on the internal documents Haugen shared with Horwitz, the WSJ ran a series of investigative articles under the title of Facebook Files:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-facebook-files-11631713039
Haugen then also shared the material with the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the US Senate sub-committee. She is to appear before the British parliament on Monday.

Meanwhile, some of the leaked documents add much more details to the original Horwitz report about Facebook’s role in the increasingly divisive and violent political landscape of India. The platform does not have as many checks and balances to block hate accounts in the developing world as it has in the west, the documents show.

Facebook Papers: India Story:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/10/24/india-facebook-misinformation-hate-speech/

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/23/technology/facebook-india-misinformation.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage§ion=Technology