Days before the Cambridge Analytica story broke last month, the senior leadership from Facebook<\/a> India flew down to Colombo to negotiate with authorities on lifting an eight-day blockade of several social media sites for alleged publication of Sinhala 'hate speech' articles that incited communal violence.
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The moment that was resolved, a bigger crisis engulfed the world. With India surpassing even the US in terms of active users, the world’s largest democracy could have literally broken the back of the tech giant. So while testifying before the US Senate last week, when Mark Zuckerberg<\/a>, chief executive and founder of Facebook, said Facebook was committed to maintaining integrity of elections around the world, including India, it wasn’t just lip service. “This is my top priority for 2018.”
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\nThe firefighting and the crackdown on the ground is already playing out.
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\nBruised and battered by users, regulators and policymakers around the world, for issues as diverse as false news on the platform to information of over 80 million users being mined by data analytics and political consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica, Facebook has introduced a third-party fact-checking programme in India to combat the spread of “false news” on its platform, starting with a pilot in Karnataka, which goes to polls next month.
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\nIt is partnering with BOOM, an independent digital journalism initiative certified through the International Fact-Checking Network, for the project. Like India, similar initiatives in France, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, Mexico, Indonesia, the Philippines and the US are underway.
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\n“It’s been a cross-collaborative effort. Response has been immediate and outreach straight from the top,” says a Facebook official on condition of anonymity. It had to be, for, arguably, Zuckerberg knows more about the daily lives of around 250 million prime local users than perhaps even the government of India.
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\nThey sign up for free while Facebook mines user data to target ads and campaigns, selling sensitive information to advertisers, which has helped the 2004 startup become a $40-billion global social media giant, with 2.1 billion users worldwide — and a daily active user base of over one billion!
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Even as Zuckerberg battles the biggest crisis facing Facebook — alleged hijacking of data of 87 millions users (including about half a million in India) by British firm Cambridge Analytica — the network’s power is apparent in how it operates in India. There are no centres for data, research and development or engineering. There’s no country head! The network just expanded by word of mouth. Even for popular messaging app WhatsApp<\/a>, part of Facebook, India has the largest user base, without having either a full-time executive or a local server!
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\nFacebook has made only small investments in India, a company spokesperson saying, “We don’t share that figure, like most multinationals don’t.”
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\nFilings with the Registrar of Companies show Facebook India Online Services’ total expenses nearly doubled to Rs 285.5 crore in 2016-17, from
\nRs 147.5 crore a year earlier, small change for the global networking giant. 2016-17 revenue of Rs 341.8 crore was a 93% jump over 2015-16 revenue of Rs 177 crore. Net profit climbed 31% to Rs 40.7 crore in 2016-17. While advertisers on the platform are often billed in Ireland, these figures don’t capture that billing.
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\nWhile most or all multinationals have their feet on the ground, “Facebook’s country head is probably an algorithm,” says a Mumbai-based headhunter who wished not to be named. On a more serious note, he adds, “They didn’t lose sleep not having a country head. That shows the lack of importance the company attaches to India. But if they are still not serious, regulations will force Facebook to have people on the ground to manage operations. They can’t get into services like payments without any staff or data centre.”
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