Offensive posts’ removal a big step towards transparency, lauds IT Minister
Facebook and Instagram have removed millions of posts in compliance with the new Information Technology rules. Facebook has taken proactive action on 1.8 million pieces of content containing adult nudity and sexual activity, 2.5 million pieces on violent and graphic content.
Of the 30.5 million pieces of content by users in India that Facebook actioned between May 15 and June 15, 25 million were identified as spam. On Instagram, of the 2.03 million pieces of content that were removed, 34.4 per cent were actioned for showing suicide and self-injury followed by 32.9 per cent posts that were actioned for showing violence and graphic content.
As Twitter has fallen out of favour with the Government, Union IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Saturday lauded Facebook, Google and Instagram on Twitter for the removal of offensive posts as per the new IT laws and termed it a big step towards transparency.
“Nice to see significant social media platforms like Google, Facebook and Instagram following the new IT Rules. First compliance report on voluntary removal of offensive posts published by them as per IT Rules is a big step towards transparency,” Prasad tweeted.
The publishing of compliance reports by Google, Facebook and Instagram is bound to turn up the heat on Twitter, which has been engaged in a tussle with the Indian Government over the new social media rules.
The new IT rules require large digital platforms (with over 5 million users) to release a compliance report every month, stating the details of complaints received and action taken thereon.
Facebook removed 25 million pieces of content identified as ‘spam’. It took down 1.8 million pieces of content containing “adult nudity and sexual activity”, of which 99.6% was done proactively. Actions were also taken in cases of suicide and self-injury-related content numbering 589,000. Facebook’s proactive rate was more than 99 percent across most of the metrics except bullying and harassment (36.7 percent), organized hate by dangerous organizations’ and individuals (98.8 percent), hate speech (96.4 percent), and content showing regulated goods such as drugs (97.9 percent) and firearms (89.4 percent). Facebook will publish its next report on July 15, containing details of user complaints received and action taken.
On Instagram, the highest number of content actioned (699,000) was under the suicide and self-injury category, of which the proactive rate was 99.8%. This was followed by 668,000 pieces of “violent and graphic content”. Adult nudity and sexual activity led to action on 490,000 pieces of content. Unlike Facebook, Instagram did not perform as well but was a bit better at detecting bullying and harassment (43.1 percent), at least in percentage terms. But in absolute numbers, Facebook had automatically detected 43,306 pieces of content while Instagram had automatically detected 46,548 pieces of content.
“We use a combination of Artificial Intelligence, reports from our community, and review by our teams to identify and review content against our policies. We will continue to add more information and build on these efforts towards transparency as we evolve this report,” a Facebook spokesperson said.
Four days ago, Google too released its transparency report for the month of April. Google had stated that 27,762 complaints were received by Google and YouTube in April this year from individual users in India over alleged violation of local laws or personal rights, which resulted in removal of 59,350 pieces of content.
Twitter and the Government have been on a collision course on multiple issues in the past months as well, including during the farmers’ protest and later when the microblogging platform tagged political posts of several leaders of the ruling party BJP as “manipulated media”, drawing a sharp rebuke from the Centre. Even in the backdrop of heightened strained relations with the Indian government, Twitter recently briefly blocked IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad from accessing his own account over alleged violation of US copyright law -- a move that was immediately slammed by the minister as being arbitrary and in gross violation of IT rules.
India is a major market for global digital platforms. As per data cited by the Government earlier this year, India has 53 crore WhatsApp users, 41 crore Facebook subscribers, 21 crore Instagram clients, while 1.75 crore account holders are on microblogging platform Twitter.