Over the years, the social media giant has come under increasing criticism for failing to deploy necessary resources to sort out issues unique to the country.

Hate speech and other inflammatory content have become a big problem on Facebook, and the social media giant has been struggling to contain and remove harmful posts from around the world.

The “Facebook files” – leaked internal company documents obtained by the Wall Street Journal, had earlier revealed that less than two percent of hate speech on the platform are removed from for violating Facebook’s rules. Internal reports written by company employees showed that Facebook’s algorithms recommended hate speech and misinformation.

Now, a new internal document titled “An Indian Test User’s Descent Into a Sea of Polarizing, Nationalistic Messages”, part of the “Facebook files” and obtained by the New York Times has revealed that the company struggled with indecisiveness in curbing hate speech and misinformation in its biggest market – India.

The leaked report, one of the several memos and studies, written by the social media giant’s employees in India, shows how the company has been selective in removing hate speech, especially anti-Muslim content.

Facebook has over 34 crore users in India, and over the years has come under increasing criticism for failing to deploy necessary resources to sort out issues unique to the country. Despite being available in more than a dozen or so Indian languages, the company doesn’t have the tools necessary to monitor and remove harmful content being spread in local languages.

The documents reveal that fake accounts and bots associated with political parties have been wreaking havoc by fiddling with elections throughout the country, while a new initiative by the social media giant to focus on exchanges between family and friends has been contributing to the spread of misinformation, especially during the pandemic.

Unsurprisingly, the documents show that 87 percent of Facebook’s budget for curbing and removing misinformation is spent in the United States alone, while the rest of the world only gets 13 percent. Users in North America only make up around 10 percent of Facebook’s user base, while India alone makes up over 23 percent of its user base.