Facebook's Arbitrary Censorship on news pages in india
Sub : Facebook's Arbitrary Censorship of News Channels in India: Violation of Regulatory Mechanism and Freedom of Expression
Dear Sir / Madam,
I'm Proprietor of one of leading digital news channels in eastern India. I have great presence in facebook and YouTube. One of my news pages in facebook have more than 1 million followers and the other one have more than 2 lakh followers. Before demotion of my pages my pages have cumulatively have more than 50 million views per month in facebook because of neutral presentation of facts. Most importantly the news contents were/are critical to government policies wherever facts indicates such things. But off late, facebook use to restrict, remove contents whichever critical to govt. It imposed restrictions on uploading and live streaming in its platform for my channel's.
Facebook's arbitrary exercise of power is evident in the following actions:
A. Content Removal:
Facebook has removed news content critical of the government, citing violations of its Community Standards. However, the lack of transparency in determining what constitutes a violation and inconsistent application of these standards raises concerns about biased censorship.
B. Page Demotion and Restricted Monetization:
News channels heavily rely on their Facebook pages to reach their audiences and monetize their content through advertising. By arbitrarily demoting pages or restricting monetization, Facebook adversely affects the financial viability and reach of these channels, undermining their ability to operate independently.
C. Page Removal:
In some cases, Facebook has entirely removed news channels' pages critical of the government. This extreme measure deprives news channels of their entire audience and hampers their ability to disseminate information to the public.
D. Restrictions on monetization: Facebook arbitrarily imposed Restrictions on monetization which directly effects smooth functioning of my news channel, to pay salary , to pay rents, etc.
E. Facebook rarely responds to queries or appeals
Please guide how to proceed to court and on what grounds ?