Facebook’s Delhi deposition: A missed opportunity
It’s not just that Facebook didn’t answer any questions of substance, it’s that the Delhi assembly committee didn’t ask many.
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Editor's note: Over an hour and 20 minutes had gone by. There were questions posed in this duration that would have tested the patience of Shivnath Thukral, but this one really took him by surprise. On 18 November, the Facebook India public policy executive was put on a stand, in front of a committee formed by the Delhi legislative assembly. The room full of committee members, cameramen looking to record the proceedings and a couple of Facebook executives, was beaming with anticipation. Thukral was under oath and, for the first time in India, a proceeding involving a big-tech firm was to be live-streamed. The question for Thukral was whether Facebook had played a role in the occurrence of riots in the national capital in February 2020. And the assembly’s peace and harmony committee had been formed to find out the answer. The hearing started off slow and it seemed that it would pick up the pace at some point, but in the 83rd minute, it looks like even Thukral—a former journalist and a key part of Facebook’s public policy team for four …
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