Facebook removes millions of posts to comply with IT Rules, 2021

The report provides details on actions taken against violating content on Facebook and Instagram for content created by users in India. Facebook has identified two metrics – ‘Content Actioned’ which measures the number of pieces of content (such as posts, photos, videos or comments) the platform take action on for going against its community standards. This metric shows the scale of the enforcement activity.

While the second metric Proactive Rate shows the percentage of all content or accounts acted on that the company found and flagged before users reported them. This metric is an indicator of how effectively Facebook detect violations.

In the first report for the period between 15 May and 15 June, 2021, Facebook said it took action against content that violated its community standards across 10 different categories or what company calls policy areas.

Facebook has taken highest number of action against 25 million spam content with 99.9% proactive rate. A total of 2.5 million violent and graphic content was taken action against with 99.9% proactive rate. Facebook said that it clamped down on 1.8 million adult nudity and sexual activity related content with 99.6% proactive rate.

Other categories of content violation on Facebook include hate speech, dangerous organizations and individuals: organized hate, dangerous organizations and individuals: terrorist propaganda, bullying and harassment, regulated goods – drugs, regulated goods – firearms, and suicide and self-injury.

On Facebook’s photo sharing platform Instagram, suicide and self-injury content was the most violated content category with platform taking action against over 6.99 lakh posts with 99.8% proactive rate. Violent and graphic content was the second most violated content category with platform taking action against over 6.68 lakh posts with 99.7% proactive rate. Adulty nudity and sexual activity was the third most violated content category with 4.90 lakh posts being either taken down or violating photos or video content being blurred.

Bullying and harassment was another high violation category with 1.08 lakh posts and hate speech with 53, 000 violations against which action was taken.

Facebook clarified that the metric for ‘Spam’ on Instagram is not available yet and it is working on it.

“Over the years, we have consistently invested in technology, people and processes to further our agenda of keeping our users safe and secure online and enable them to express themselves freely on our platform. 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’ll continue to add more information and build on these efforts towards transparency as we evolve this report,” said a Facebook spokesperson.

The social media company said that the next report will be published on 15 July, containing details of user complaints received and action taken.

Earlier, homegrown social media platform Koo released the compliance report for June 2021 which shows that of the 5,502 Koos reported by the community out of which 22.7% (1,253) were removed, while other action was taken against the rest – 4,249. Meanwhile, Google also published its report stating it received 27,762 complaints during 1 to 30 April period, of which 26,707 or 96% of the complaints were related to copyright.