In New Delhi, India, social media titan Meta reports that over 16.2 million content pieces were “actioned” on Facebook across various violation categories back in November. Coincidentally, Instagram allegedly also took action against 3.2 million pieces across 12 categories during the same period, as per the data shared in a compliance report.
Under regional IT rules enforced earlier in 202, large digital platforms (those with over 5 million users) have to publish periodic monthly compliance reports detailing complaints received, and the equivalent actions are taken. The report also includes details about content disabled or removed via proactive monitoring using automated tools. On that note, Facebook took action on 18.8 million content pieces in October, spanning 13 categories, with Instagram doing the same for 3 million pieces across 12 categories in the same period.
Proactive Action
For November, Instagram received around 424 reports through the Indian grievance mechanism. During the same period, Facebook made its name change to Meta. of the 16,.2 actioned content pieces, 11 million were related to spam, 2 million were related to violent and graphic content, about 1.5 million were related to nudity and adult content, and around a couple of hundred thousand were related to hate speech.
Other less prominent but equally concerning content categories include bullying and harassment (102,700), suicide and self-injury (370,500), dangerous groups and terrorist propaganda (71,700), and organized hate (12,400). Categories like child endangerment, nudity, and physical abuse saw around 163,200 actioned content pieces, while child sexual exploitation saw a whopping 700,300 pieces actioned. Violence and incitement had around 190,500 pieces actioned.
The term ‘Actioned’ refers to the response performed resulting from policy and standards violations. It’s not necessarily a ‘take-down’ of content but is a more direct response and deemed necessary by the supporting regulations. Beyond content removal, other ‘actions’ include content censorship, intermittent profile banning, and even account suspension.
Because the report holds a lot of numeric values and figures, we risk turning this into an academic paper if we were to include said information here. Either way, the data is pretty clear about the type of content that’s being actioned on – anything inappropriately sexual or exhibits hate, and abuse in any form will be dealt with accordingly. The numbers themselves are more concerning because, through them, you catch a glimpse of just how bad things are getting in the online space.
The Wrap
The main thing being highlighted here is that social media, in general, remains highly unmoderated. The sheer size of specific platforms makes it nearly impossible for even automated tools to fully monitor and track every single thing that’s going on. What systems are unable to capture during initial passes are later discovered thanks to compliance initiatives such as this that effectively compel social platforms to do thorough checks regarding their complaint-response rates.
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