In continuation of the previous proceedings, the ‘Peace and Harmony Committee’ under the Chairmanship of Raghav Chadha has examined an extremely crucial and important witness Mark S Luckie, a former Facebook employee and a digital strategist journalist on Thursday in light of the allegations and issues of grave concern raised in the complaints against the social media platform- Facebook.
Luckie, during his tenure at Facebook has actively worked with various core teams and thus has an extremely relevant and significant set of insights which clearly throw light on the otherwise opaque functionality of the Facebook as a corporation.
During the course of deposition, he made extremely scathing revelations on the internal functioning of Facebook, thus spilling beans on the entire organisational structure of Facebook globally as well as regionally.
Luckie affirmed that there has been a 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. 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.
He further affirmed that as the CEO of the Facebook- 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.
Mr. Mark Luckie very strongly asserted that, the liaising carried out by the top honchos of Facebook and their regional heads of countries where it has 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.
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 as 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. Luckie clearly mentioned that Facebook would like the world to believe that it is politically agnostic to maintain a safe image; however, it is not as agnostic as it claims to be.
Luckie also elucidated that the executive team of the Facebook including the CEO of the company Mark Zuckerberg are generally aware of such gross inaction and misappropriation of the community standards and other policies of the company however, more than often it goes condoned by the executive team until it is actually garnering negativity or affecting their revenue generation adversely.
Luckie also revealed that there is a growing discontent among the Facebook content moderators and other employees on account of their arbitrary mechanisms. Luckie has stated that he has been observing the committee proceedings since the beginning and concur with the sum and substance of the allegations levelled by the witnesses and experts during their deposition.
The peace and harmony committee is holding a hearing on complaints received by it against certain content on Facebook. It has examined six witnesses so far, including independent journalists and digital rights activists.
