On a sunny, cool Sunday last November, protestors gathered at an intersection in Menlo Park, California, outside the headquarters of the company recently renamed Meta. Families chanted “Facebook, Hatebook!” and “Facebook enables genocide!” They carried the American and Indian flags, waving them as cars honked in solidarity at the busy intersection.
Among the signs in the crowd: “Facebook is accomplice to the killings of Muslims in India” and “Facebook, your complicity in enabling Hindutva results in physical violence against Muslims, Dalits, Farmers, Activists.”
The protests, which were held nationwide, were organized to call out content-moderation policies on Facebook and WhatsApp, which Meta owns. Leaked documents obtained by the Associated Press found that Facebook “was selective in curbing hate speech, misinformation, and inflammatory posts” in India, allowing anti-Muslim rhetoric supported by the party of hard-line Hindu-nationalist prime minister Narendra Modi to proliferate. The U.S. protests were held by a coalition of organizations, including the Indian American Muslim Council.
“Facebook just needs to do better in recognizing what’s right and wrong, and to be doing the right thing and taking [harmful content] down, and not letting a lot of the hate that stands on the internet roam free,” 15-year-old Hana Khan, who attended the Menlo Park protest, tells Teen Vogue.
Facebook has come under fire in the past few years for allowing misinformation to spread on its platform in India, where deadly anti-Muslim violence has coincided with a sharp rise in inflammatory content on the platform. One test researcher found that if they followed all the Facebook recommendations for a user in Kerala, India, within weeks their feed was filled with gory images and nationalistic messages, according to documents obtained by the New York Times and other news organizations.
“We’ve invested significantly in technology to find hate speech in various languages, including Hindi and Bengali," a Meta spokesperson tells Teen Vogue. "As a result, we’ve reduced the amount of hate speech that people see by more than half this year. Today, it’s now down to 0.03%. Hate speech against marginalized groups, including Muslims, is on the rise in India and globally. So we are improving enforcement and are committed to updating our policies as hate speech evolves online.”
This phenomenon has been painful for members of the diaspora, who say they’re eager to discuss issues such as Islamophobia, casteism, and homophobia, but know they may face intense backlash — including from their own relatives — for doing so.
“This [misinformation] plays out for any issue or relevant topic," says Niki Heer, an organizer with Chicago Desi Youth Rising (CDYR). "I’ve experienced it with my own family; I’ve heard other South Asians talk about it.”
During the pandemic, Heer says, CDYR members have seen relatives and family friends in India spread false information about vaccines, conspiracy theories about COVID-19's origin, and home remedies to take in lieu of getting vaccinated. She says the most troubling part of misinformation, whether about the virus or marginalized groups, is the difficulty of tracing a post’s origin, particularly on WhatsApp.
“The fact that the message always says forwarded many times — literally, where did this come from?” she asks. “Where did this start? I think that’s especially frustrating, because I don’t know where this is coming from or who is sharing it with my parents.”
Apps such as WhatsApp have shrunk the distance between South Asia and the United States so that relatives living abroad are just a DM or text away. While various COVID-19 lockdowns have kept many families apart physically, messaging apps have helped bridge those divides.
“It feels like more official business happens [via] text message, but WhatsApp is for everything else,” says Heer. “It feels like a more approachable and accessible way to keep in touch with people.”
Yet WhatsApp and social media have also helped “normalize” Islamophobia both in India and the U.S., Hana says. “Small, little jokes about it — it makes it normalized, and makes it okay for this stuff to go around.”
Fifteen-year-old Shifah Syed, who is from the Bay Area and attended the Menlo Park protest, notes the connection as well: “[Non-Muslims] don’t really realize it because it doesn’t affect them the way it affects us.”
Young organizers say combating Islamophobia and misinformation online requires having tough conversations with relatives, attending in-person protests, and spreading awareness of these problems on their own social media. Says Hana, “Being Indian females in this community, it’s really important for us to take part in these protests, and always reposting about this [hate on social media].”
CDYR has been trying to facilitate difficult conversations between its members and older relatives, many of whom skew more conservative. In 2020, the group held an event with the Pilsen Alliance, a Chicago-based community-engagement organization, and City Bureau, a local-news outlet, about how to talk to your parents about politics. This may include politics in the U.S., and for young South Asians, it might also include having tough discussions about Islamophobia or casteism.
Fabliha Yeaqub, a 22-year-old Bangladeshi organizer, is particularly concerned about misinformation perpetuated about queer people, especially trans women, known in South Asia as Hijras. Yeaqub is the founder of the Marigold Seeds Collective, which helps queer and trans South Asians create bonds through friendship and art.
“My dad doesn’t use Facebook but my mom definitely does, and sometimes she comes to me with these weird, bizarre headlines about different people, whether it’s Hijras being pedophiles or things like that, or the latest COVID-related [news],” they say. “It’s obviously fake, right? It’s made up, but I have to explain to her, 'Don't believe everything you see on Facebook.’”
In-person community organizing can make a difference, according to Yeaqub. A New York City-based organization they work with recently held an art class for “aunties,” South Asian shorthand for describing an older woman who is not necessarily related to you. Yeaqub said the person who taught the class was a nonbinary artist named Tara, who instructed the aunties on pronouns and what being nonbinary is. Yeaqub’s mother eventually became the lead coordinator for this workshop.
“It really opened their eyes, and it was so interesting and beautiful to see that my mom [got involved]," says Yeaqub. "She'll come up to me and ask, ‘Am I using these pronouns correctly?’ ‘Is this person nonbinary?’ And it’s so beautiful to see those words come out of her mouth.”
Yeaqub fully credits in-person conversations with the power to turn the tide of hate and misinformation that is so prevalent online. “If it weren’t for having these compassionate conversations and really being vulnerable with one another and sharing stories," Yeaqub says of their mother's experience, "this wouldn’t have happened. Because, instead, she would have been reading these horrendous Facebook headlines and WhatsApp threads.”
Want more from Teen Vogue? Check this out: Why I’m Protesting the Indian Government’s Abuses Against Muslims
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