'Delhi riots could have been averted if Facebook had acted promptly'

A former Facebook employee told a Delhi assembly panel that violence in the national capital in February this year could have been easily averted if the social media giant had acted in a proactive and prompt manner.

The Committee on Peace and Harmony, headed by Aam Aadmi Party leader Raghav Chadha, had summoned the former Facebook employee Mark S Luckie in the wake of several allegations of culpability of the social media platform in the riots in Delhi earlier this year.

"He (Mark S Luckie) also asserted the events like 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," read a release by Committee on Peace and Harmony.

Luckie, who has actively worked with various core teams during his tenure at Facebook, made extremely scathing revelations on the internal functioning of Facebook, thus spilling beans on the entire organisational structure of social media giant globally as well as regionally.

During the course of the deposition, Luckie affirmed that there has been repeated interference by the top officials of the Facebook teams including their policy heads at the instance of the political parties upon the content moderation teams which has caused eventual compromise in the execution of their own community standards, read the release.

He alleged that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg also partakes in various liaisons with different political parties across the globe in order to earn special benefits or favours as it is of common knowledge that many prominent politically figures seek his indulgence every now and then.

According to the Committee on Peace and Harmony, Luckie also spoke about the recruitment process of the top heads of the company where 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 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 shields under.