Continuing its previous proceedings, the Delhi Legislative Assembly’s Peace and Harmony Committee, chaired by AAP legislator Raghav Chadha, examined former Facebook employee Mark S. Luckie here on Thursday.
In a statement, the Committee said Mr. Luckie, who had actively worked with various core teams at the social media giant, made “extremely scathing revelations” on the internal functioning of Facebook.
“Mr. Luckie affirmed that there has been a repeated interference by top officials of Facebook teams, including their policy heads at the instance of the political parties upon the content moderation teams that caused eventual compromise in the execution of their own community standards,” the Committee stated.
“He has affirmed that Facebook has been creating policies with respect to efficient content moderation which are not consistent or even transparent and are developed in a manner that it suits Facebook and its business model rather than the persons who have been victimised by its inefficient policies,” it said.
According to the Committee, Mr. Luckie sought to affirm that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg partakes in “various liaisons with different political parties across the globe” in order to earn “special benefits or favours”. Mr. Luckie, the Committee said, spoke about the recruitment process of the top heads of the company where for an “extremely important post like that of Public Policy Head” persons with “cordial government relations” or having “special political affiliations” and those with “strong hold on lobbying within the government” were “preferred”.
According to the Committee, Mr. Luckie mentioned that the intention behind recruiting those with “governmental influence” was because Facebook wants “an eventual and effectual change in existing laws and governmental policies” to accommodate the platform in a manner that it can “generate maximum business.”
Another reason for its alleged preference for “politically associated persons” as company employees was so that it could “strike a deal with the government of the country at the event of damage” used by Facebook for numerous reasons.
He, the Committee stated, also asserted that events like the Delhi communal clashes, Myanmar genocide and Sri Lanka communal violence “could have been easily averted” had Facebook acted in a “more proactive and prompt manner”.
