Protesters say Facebook incites violence against Muslims

MENLO PARK, Calif. - Protesters rallied outside the Meta headquarters in Menlo Park, aka Facebook, accusing the social media platform of inciting violence against Muslims in India.

"Basically we are trying to bring awareness to the masses here for what Facebook is doing in India. They are technically promoting hate," said Javid Ali with the American Indian Muslim Council.

He said some dangerous organizations have used the platform to divide people and pit religions against each other.

"These organizations are openly inciting mobs telling them to kill Muslims, calling them traitors."

A recent report by the Associated Press found Facebook has known about these issues for years, and has been selective in removing misinformation and anti-Muslim content.

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Demonstrators accused Mark Zuckerberg of being complicit.

"In my opinion he is not regulating because he is putting profit over people’s lives," said Kathikeyan Shanmugam. 

"Their inability and turning a blind eye to hateful speeches and not being able to moderate that has directly resulted in people losing lives," said Ali.

Demonstrators want the company to remove hateful speech, identify dangerous groups, moderate posts, and invest resources in stopping violence.

"We want Mark Zuckerberg to stop the propaganda," said protester Malika Khan. "He should use Facebook for helping humanity, for human rights not for killing innocent minorities."

Back in October, Facebook told the AP in a statement it has "invested significantly in technology to find hate speech in various languages, including Hindi and Bengali" which has "reduced the amount of hate speech that people see by half in 2021.

KTVU reached out for an additional comment on the weekend protest but did not get a response by deadline. 

Similar protests were held in cities across the United States including in L.A., Seattle, and Chicago.