NEW DELHI: Former Facebook employee Mark S Luckie gave his deposition before Delhi Assembly’s peace and harmony committee headed by Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLA Raghav Chadha on Thursday.
According to the statement issued by the committee, Luckie said repeated interference by the top officials of the Facebook teams including their policy heads at the instance of the political parties upon the content mode ration teams has caused eventual compromise in the execution of their own community standards.
The witness during the course of a deposition made extremely scathing revelations on the internal functioning of Facebook, thus giving insights on the entire organisational structure of Facebook globally as well as regionally, also said the statement.
The panel is holding a hearing into complaints against certain content on Facebook received by it, examining six witnesses so far including independent journalists and digital rights activists.
The panel, in August, decided to summon Facebook officials as it initiated proceedings over complaints about the social media giant’s alleged ‘deliberate and intentional inaction to contain hateful content’ in India. He is a digital strategist, author and journalist.
“Luckie very strongly asserted that the liaising carried out by the top honchos of Facebook and their regional heads of countries where it has a considerable market to capture often leads to compromising of the execution of community standards, thus, in turn, contributes in disruption of peace and harmony in the society,” said the statement.
No immediate reaction was available from Facebook as its spokesperson refused to comment on the charges made by Luckie. The statement of the committee headed Chadha said that during Thursday’s proceedings Luckie had spoken about the recruitment process of the top heads of the company.
“He signified that for an extremely important post like that of Public Policy Head, persons having cordial government relations or having special political affiliations and who have a strong hold on lobbying within the government are preferred, a practice which in itself casts a shadow of doubt on the ‘politically agnostic management’ stance which Facebook often tries to shield sunder, ” said the statement.