Instagram received 1,037 user grievances through its grievance redressal officer, it's highest since the IT Rules 2021 were enacted, while Facebook reported 911 user grievances (its second-highest so far) in January 2022, according to Meta's compliance report. Both platforms have responded to all the grievances, the report revealed. The number of child endangering, sexually exploitative, and nude content that was actioned on Instagram as well as content related to terrorism and bullying actioned on Facebook, significantly shot up in this reporting period. The proactive detection rate for these categories stayed between 84.5% and 99.6%. Compared to December 2021, there was a drop in the amount of content related to suicide (and self injury) and spam on Facebook as well as Instagram content related to terrorism, drugs, and violence, that saw some form of action. The report defined ‘content actioned’ as a photo, video, or text post that was either removed, covered with a warning label, or otherwise actioned. Meanwhile, proactive detection rate is a measurement of the content that's been actioned by platforms without users flagging it. In India, significant social media intermediaries (like Facebook and Instagram) are required to publish these reports under the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021. These reports are a reflection of the number of user grievances received, action taken, content proactively removed by platforms, etc. Drawing trends from their content moderation efforts is important given that leaked documents have shown that Meta's platforms have previously not done enough on those counts. What…
