17.5 mn content pieces ‘actioned’ on FB in India during May: Meta

NEW DELHI: Meta-owned Facebook ‘actioned’ about 17.5 million content pieces across 13 violation categories in India during May, according to the latest monthly report by the social media giant.

The content ‘actioned’ belonged to categories including bullying and harassment, violent and graphic content, adult nudity and sexual activity, child endangerment, dangerous organisations and individuals, and spam, among others.

Facebook took action against about 17.5 million content pieces between May 1-31, 2022 across multiple categories, while Meta’s photo-sharing platform Instagram ‘actioned’ nearly 4.1 million pieces of content across 12 categories during the same period, according to its recently-released India monthly report. “Taking action could include removing a piece of content from Facebook or Instagram or covering photos or videos that may be disturbing to some audiences with a warning,” Meta’s report said.

Under the IT rules that came into effect in May last year, large digital platforms (with over five million users) have to publish periodic compliance reports every month, mentioning the details of complaints received and action taken. The reports also include details of content removed or disabled via proactive monitoring, using automated tools.

Microblogging platform Twitter’s India Transparency report of June 2022 reveals that it received over 1,500 complaints in the country through its local grievance channel between April 26, 2022 to May 25, 2022.

“In addition to the above, we processed 115 grievances which were appealing Twitter account suspensions. These were all resolved and the appropriate responses were sent,” Twitter’s report said.

“We have not overturned any of the account suspensions based on the specifics of the situation, ergo, all of the reported accounts remain suspended,” it added.

More than 46,500 accounts were suspended for violating guidelines, through proactive monitoring, the Twitter report said, noting this data represents global actions taken, and not just those related to content from India. The government has issued a notice to Twitter to comply with all its past orders by July 4, failing which it may lose its intermediary status, which means it will be liable for all the comments posted on its platform.

Meta-owned WhatsApp has banned over 19 lakh Indian accounts in May, on the basis of complaints received from users via its grievances channel and through its own mechanism to prevent and detect violations, according to the monthly report published by the messaging platform recently.

Meanwhile, in case of Facebook, Meta’s latest report published on June 30 showed that of the 17.5 mn actioned pieces, 3.7 million were in violent and graphic content category, 2.6 mn in adult nudity and sexual activity category, while 9.3 million pertained to spam.

Some of the other categories under which content was ‘actioned’ included bullying and harassment (294,500), suicide and self-injury (482,000), dangerous organisations and individuals - terrorism (106,500), and dangerous organisations and individuals - organised hate (4,300).

Under the IT rules that came into effect in May last year, large digital platforms (with over five million users) have to publish periodic compliance reports every month