What Palak says about role of Meta, TikTok during recent unrest

Video-based social media platform TikTok's emergency responses to the government requests during the recent unrest were satisfactory but Meta – the company behind Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Thread – was found to have been biased, Zunaid Ahmed Palak, state minister for posts, telecommunications and information technology, said in Dhaka yesterday (31 July).

He came up with the remarks during a press conference after meetings with representatives of Meta and TikTok in the morning at the telecom regulator's office in the capital.

Palak said during the online meeting with Meta representatives the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) categorically presented the Facebook content that was not taken down despite the government's requests citing them as "inciting misinformation responsible for turning a peaceful, non-political student protest into a violent political movement".

"We told Meta that the questioned contents violated local constitution and law as well as their own community standards that are being partially, biasedly applied in different countries."

For instance, he mentioned about anti-government Facebook posts spreading inciting rumour or misinformation like "900 protesters were dead in Bangladesh" or "100 students' dead bodies were found in the capital's Hatirjheel".

He said, "When TikTok successfully responded to emergencies in Bangladesh, why Facebook failed? This is our question."

The government asked Meta, according to Palak, why it let posting continue from the verified Facebook page of former prime minister Khaleda Zia while she was imprisoned, if it supported Meta's community standards.

"Or, why Facebook did not block convicted BNP leader Tarique Rahman's Facebook post that called local law enforcement agencies "Sheikh Hasina's killer forces".

Palak said, "Any Facebook content against Israeli forces or the pro-Palestine ones are taken down across the world, in any language."

It has its declared community standards that don't allow uploading adult, abusive, hate speech, privacy-violating or violent graphical content, he said. "It followed it in Europe, America and Australia, not in Bangladesh," said Palak, adding that the BTRC team was communicating specific identified contents and its response in taking them down was not satisfactory as it stood last among the three popular social media platforms.

TikTok doubled down on fact-checking, curating their artificial intelligence (AI) tools in response to the emergency in Bangladesh taken down 67% inappropriate contents, which was 20% for YouTube and only 13% for Meta, he added.

"We want them to make no discrimination against Bangladesh," Palak said, adding that the Facebook algorithm increased the reach of the anti-government posts while the reach of the counter ones that support Bangladesh's Liberation War, Bangabandhu, the Awami League and Sheikh Hasina were reduced.

Claiming that no one was shot before the Facebook posts that included misinformation and fake pictures taken from other geographies sparked anger and violence, Palak said, "Facebook cannot deny its responsibility here.

"They said they will be responsible in future. As we want our cyberspace open for all, we urged them to have local offices and officials having knowledge of local laws, history, values, religious sentiments."

Meta did say they have third-party fact-checkers working in Bangladesh, and Palak, questioning their neutrality, claimed the fact-checkers were found to have been of anti-government ideologies and stances.

"If the Facebook fact-checkers in Bangladesh were neutral, the misinformation and false contents would not have spread," Palak added.

YouTube's parent company Google was sent a letter to comply with local laws and its policies on removing inflammatory content promoting misinformation, said officials. In a written response, Google assured the same but asked for some time to discuss the specific points, they said.

Facebook, YouTube, TikTok unlocked

The access to Facebook and TikTok was restored in the country yesterday after nearly two weeks.

YouTube, which had been inaccessible with mobile data since the outage, was also unlocked along with other social media platforms.

Users could access the platforms at around 2pm soon after the meetings with the representatives of Meta and TikTok.

Palak on 18 July said the government had to cut off mobile internet to prevent violence provoked by social media content.

However, later he blamed the violent devastation of some installations including a few internet infrastructure and fibre optic cables for the internet blackout.

The broadband internet was restored on a limited scale beginning from the evening on 23 July. The mobile internet was restored on 28 July keeping the popular social media platforms restricted.