In 2019, a pair of Facebook employees set up a dummy account to better understand the experience of a new user in India.

Without any direction from the user, the Facebook account was soon flooded with pro-Modi propaganda and anti-Muslim hate speech. https://t.co/cRqTdlezrA

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) October 24, 2021

New: Internal Facebook documents show its services are used to spread religious hatred in India. Company researchers identified calls to violence that coincided with 2020 riots in Delhi that left 53 dead. @WSJ's Facebook Files latest. With @JeffHorwitz https://t.co/y6wEsw65CW

— Newley Purnell (@newley) October 23, 2021

Mark Zuckerberg praised India in December as a special and important country for Facebook, saying that millions of people there use its platforms every day to stay in touch with family and friends...

— Newley Purnell (@newley) October 23, 2021

Internally, researchers were painting a different picture: Facebook’s products in India were awash with inflammatory content that one report linked to deadly religious riots.

— Newley Purnell (@newley) October 23, 2021

Inflammatory content on Facebook spiked 300% above previous levels at times during the months following December 2019, a period in which religious protests swept India, researchers wrote in a July 2020 report that was reviewed by The WSJ.

— Newley Purnell (@newley) October 23, 2021

Rumors and calls to violence spread particularly on Facebook’s WhatsApp messaging service in late February 2020, when communal violence in Delhi left 53 dead, according to the report. India is Facebook’s biggest market with hundreds of millions of users.

— Newley Purnell (@newley) October 23, 2021

Hindu and Muslim users in India say they are subjected to “a large amount of content that encourages conflict, hatred and violence on Facebook and WhatsApp,” such as material blaming Muslims for the spread of Covid-19 and assertions...

— Newley Purnell (@newley) October 23, 2021

... that Muslim men are targeting Hindu women for marriage as a “form of Muslim takeover” of the country, the researchers found.

— Newley Purnell (@newley) October 23, 2021

Facebook researchers interview dozens of users in India. A Hindu man in Delhi told them he received frequent messages on Facebook and WhatsApp “that are all very dangerous,” such as “Hindus are in danger, Muslims are about to kill us,” the researchers reported.

— Newley Purnell (@newley) October 23, 2021

There is “so much hatred going on” on Facebook, one Muslim man in Mumbai told the researchers, saying he feared for his life. “It’s scary, it’s really scary.”Many of the users believed it was “Facebook’s responsibility to reduce this content” in their feeds, on WhatsApp

— Newley Purnell (@newley) October 23, 2021

Facebook researchers determined that two Hindu nationalist groups with ties to India’s ruling political party post inflammatory anti-Muslim content on the platform, according to two separate reports earlier this year by teams investigating abuse of the company’s services.

— Newley Purnell (@newley) October 23, 2021

One promotes “dehumanizing posts comparing Muslims to ‘pigs’ and ‘dogs’ and misinformation claiming the Quran calls for men to rape their female family members.” The group remains active on FB, and wasn’t designated as dangerous due to “political sensitivities,” the report said.

— Newley Purnell (@newley) October 23, 2021

The reports show that Facebook is privately aware that people in its largest market are targeted with inflammatory content, and that users say the company isn’t protecting them.

— Newley Purnell (@newley) October 23, 2021

Facebook says it bans groups or individuals “after following a careful, rigorous, and multidisciplinary process" and some reports were working docs containing investigative leads for discussion, not complete investigations, and didn’t contain individual policy recommendations.

— Newley Purnell (@newley) October 23, 2021

One Muslim man in Mumbai told researchers that “if social media survives 10 more years like this, there will be only hatred.” Unless FB does a better job of policing content, India will be a “very difficult place to survive for everyone,” he said.

— Newley Purnell (@newley) October 23, 2021