Nearly 21.6 mn content pieces 'actioned' on Facebook in India during March: Meta report

New Delhi: Meta-owned Facebook 'actioned' about 21.6 million content pieces across 13 violation categories in India during March, according to a monthly report by the social media giant.

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

Facebook took action against about 21.6 million content pieces between March 1-31, 2022 across multiple categories, while Instagram actioned nearly 2.7 million pieces of content across 12 categories during the same period, according to Meta's recently-released India monthly report.

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 thereon. It also includes details of content removed or disabled via proactive monitoring using automated tools.

In case of Facebook, the latest report showed that of the 21.6 million actioned pieces, 14.9 million were in spam category, 2.5 million in violent and graphic content category and 2.1 million in adult nudity and sexual activity category.

Some of the other categories under which content was actioned included bullying and harassment (2,75,700), suicide and self-injury (5,70,800), dangerous organisations and individuals: terrorism (1,61,800); and dangerous organisations and individuals: organised hate (17,800).

"Between 1st and 31st March, we received 656 reports through the Indian grievance mechanism, and we responded to 100 per cent of these 656 reports," the report said.

It added: "Of these incoming reports, we provided tools for users to resolve their issues in 556 cases. These include pre-established channels to report content for specific violations, self-remediation flows where they can download their data, avenues to address account hacked issues etc".

For Instagram, 1,150 reports were received in March through the Indian grievance mechanism, and "we responded to 100 per cent of the 1,150 reports", it said.