India Monthly Report under the Information Technology

(Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021

Published on 29th February 2024

Scope
The following report is published in accordance with Rule 4(1)(d) of the Information Technology
(Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021.

The report contains information for a period of 31 days on (1) actions taken against violating
content on Facebook and Instagram for content created by users in India and proactive detection
rates, and (2) information on grievances received from users in India via the grievance mechanisms
described below and (3) orders received from Grievance Appellate Committee (GAC). This report
captures information for the period from 1st January, 2024 to 31st January, 2024.

We expect to publish subsequent editions of the report with a lag of 30-45 days after the reporting
period to allow sufficient time for data collection and validation. We will continue to bring more
transparency to our work and include more information about our efforts in future reports.

Facebook and Instagram policies

We want Facebook and Instagram to be places where people have a voice. To create conditions
where everyone feels comfortable expressing themselves, we must also protect their safety,
privacy, dignity and authenticity. This is why we have the Facebook Community Standards and
Instagram Community Guidelines, which define what is and is not allowed in our community.
Facebook and Instagram share content policies. This means if content is considered violating on
Facebook, it is also considered violating on Instagram.

Proactive detection and actioning of violating content

The report describes our efforts to remove harmful content from Facebook and Instagram and
demonstrate our continued commitment to making Facebook and Instagram safe and inclusive. In
this report, we are sharing two metrics which quantify our efforts on removing content and being
able to detect them proactively before a user reports them to us. These metrics are our best
estimates for actions we take on content created by users who we predict are users in India.
1. Content Actioned: We measure the number of pieces of content (such as posts, photos,
videos or comments) we take action on for going against our standards. This metric shows
the scale of our enforcement activity. Taking action could include removing a piece of
content from Facebook or Instagram or covering photos or videos that may be disturbing to
some audiences with a warning.
2. Proactive Rate: This metric shows the percentage of all content or accounts acted on that
we found and flagged before users reported them to us. We use this metric as an indicator
of how effectively we detect violations. The rate at which we can proactively detect
potentially violating content is high for some violations, meaning we find and flag most

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 content before users do. This is especially true where we have been able to build machine
learning technology that automatically identifies content that might violate our standards.
In this report, we have provided a breakdown of proactive detection and content actioned in 13
policy areas on Facebook and 12 policy areas on Instagram.

Table 1: Content Actioned and Proactive Rate on Facebook (1 January, 2024 - 31 January,
2024)
Policy Area Content Actioned Proactive Rate

1. Adult Nudity and Sexual Activity 2.0 M 98.4

2. Bullying and Harassment 315.1 K 95.6

3. Child Endangerment - Nudity and Physical Abuse 33.1 K 98.4

4. Child Endangerment - Sexual Exploitation 324.0 K 99.9

5. Dangerous Organizations and Individuals: Organized Hate 7.8 K 98.2

6. Dangerous Organizations and Individuals: Terrorism 168.1 K 99.6

7. Hate Speech 68.3 K 94.7

8. Regulated Goods: Drugs 3.0 K 98.9

9. Regulated Goods: Firearms 15.2 K 98.9

10. Suicide and Self-Injury 1.6 M 99.9

11. Spam 12.7 M 98.7

12. Violent and Graphic Content 576.7 K 99.6

13. Violence and Incitement 84.9 K 97.6

To understand more about each of these policy areas, visit Facebook’s Community Standards page.

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Table 2: Content Actioned and Proactive Rate on Instagram (1 January, 2024 - 31
January, 2024)
Policy Area Content Actioned Proactive Rate

1. Adult Nudity and Sexual Activity 962.5 K 97.4

2. Bullying and Harassment 817.5 K 95.8

3. Child Endangerment - Nudity and Physical Abuse 10.1 K 95.6

4. Child Endangerment - Sexual Exploitation 198.6 K 91.9

5. Dangerous Organizations and Individuals: Organized Hate 4.4 K 83.4

6. Dangerous Organizations and Individuals: Terrorism 38.9 K 98.6

7. Hate Speech 57.8 K 77.5

8. Regulated Goods: Drugs 1.7 K 97.8

9. Regulated Goods: Firearms 4.5 K 99.3

10. Suicide and Self-Injury 1.7 M 99.7

11. Violent and Graphic Content 641.0 K 99.3

12. Violence and Incitement 407.9 K 99.0

To understand more about each of these policy areas, visit Instagram’s Community Guidelines page.

Note:
1. These metrics are our best estimates of content we act on and of proactive rates based on the creator of the
content and predicted country locations for those users.
2. The metrics in this report are based on definitions and caveats as disclosed in Content Actioned and Proactive
Rate.
3. Given that such violations are also highly adversarial, country-level data may be less reliable. For example, bad
actors may often try to avoid detection by our systems by masking the country they are coming from. While our
enforcement systems are global and will try to account for such behaviour, this makes it very difficult to attribute
and report the accounts or content by producer country (where the person who posted content was located).
Given the global nature of our platforms where content posted in one country may be viewed almost anywhere
across the world, other ways to attribute the country of content removed in a technically feasible and repeatable
manner, become almost meaningless. So these estimates should be understood as directional best estimates
of the metrics.
4. The metric for ‘Spam’ on Instagram is not available yet. We are working on new methods to measure and report
this metric.

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 5. This report shares metrics in which we have considerable confidence in their accuracy but is not a
comprehensive list of all enforcements across Facebook and Instagram. As we develop metrics for new policy
areas, we will continue to expand this report, similar to our Community Standards Enforcement Report.

Grievances from users in India

This part of the report captures grievances from users in India received via -
● the contact form published in the Help Center regarding violations of Facebook's Terms of
Service, Facebook’s Community Standards, or questions about accounts;
● the contact form published in the Help Center regarding violations of Instagram's Terms of
Use, Instagram’s Community Guidelines, or questions about accounts; and
● the common physical mail address published in the Help Center for both Facebook and
Instagram.

The above mechanisms are open to all users in India in the respective Help Center pages and are
also searchable via the Help Center search bar.

In this report, we report on the following data associated with the grievances from users in India:
1. Total number of reports received, broken down by reasons why they were reported
2. Total number of reports that we responded to
3. Reports where we provided appropriate tools to resolve the issues
4. Reports where further specialized review was required
5. Reports where we took some action against the reported content -
a. By actioned content, we mean removing the piece of content from Facebook or
Instagram, covering photos or videos that may be disturbing to some audiences
with a warning, or disabling accounts. When something on Facebook or Instagram
is reported to us as violating local law, but doesn't go against our Community
Standards, we may restrict the content's availability in the country where it is
alleged to be illegal. This includes legal requests such as court orders.
6. Reports may have been reviewed but not actioned for several reasons, including -
a. The reported content does not violate any of our policies.
b. The reporter does not provide us enough information to locate the content or
account which they are attempting to report.
c. The reported account or content does not violate our policies.
d. The reporter is writing to us to provide feedback regarding our services.
e. The reporter is writing to us regarding a dispute between themselves and a third
party which Facebook is not in a position to arbitrate.
f. The reporter is writing to us regarding content which is not hosted on our platform.

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 g. The reporter is writing to us regarding content which they wish to see removed, but
only providing the link to an entire profile or page, and we are unable to determine
which specific content they are referring to.
h. The reporter is requiring assistance from us to access their account.

Facebook
Between 1st and 31st January, we received 29,548 reports through the Indian grievance
mechanism, and we responded to 100% of these XXX reports. The reports were received under
the following categories.

Table 3: Reports received

Category Number of reports

Fake profile that's pretending to be me 8,302

Content showing me in nudity/partial nudity or in a sexual act 523

Account has been hacked 9,242

Lost access to a page or group I used to manage 2,331

Bullying or Harassment 3,669

Request access to personal data 0

Inappropriate or Abusive Content 3,469

Report issue with how Facebook is processing my data 0

Content I appear in that I do not want displayed 378

Other issue 1,634

Total 29,548

Of these incoming reports, we provided tools for users to resolve their issues in 21,060 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.

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Table 4: Reports where appropriate tools were provided
Category Number of reports

Fake profile that's pretending to be me 5,108

Content showing me in nudity/partial nudity or in a sexual act 207

Account has been hacked 8,601

Lost access to a page or group I used to manage 2,052

Bullying or Harassment 1,561

Request access to personal data 0

Inappropriate or Abusive Content 1,716

Report issue with how Facebook is processing my data 0

Content I appear in that I do not want displayed 304

Other issue 1,511

Total 21,060

Of the other 8,488 reports where specialized review was needed, we reviewed content as per our
policies, and we took action on 4,632 reports in total. The remaining 3,856 reports were reviewed
but may not have been actioned due to the reasons explained above.

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Instagram
Between 1st and 31st January, we received 19,311 reports through the Indian grievance
mechanism, and we responded to 100% of the 19,311 reports. The reports were received under
the following categories.

Table 5: Reports received

Category Number of reports

Content showing me in nudity/partial nudity or in a sexual act 329

Fake profile that's pretending to be me 9,585

Account has been hacked 4,273

Content I appear in, that I do not want displayed 175

Request access to personal data 0

Bullying or Harassment 1,655

Inappropriate or Abusive Content 1,091

Other issue 832

Total 19,311

Of these incoming reports, we provided tools for users to resolve their issues in 9,476 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.

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Table 6: Reports where appropriate tools were provided
Category Number of reports

Fake profile that's pretending to be me 2,699

Content showing me in nudity/partial nudity or in a sexual act 74

Account has been hacked 3,779

Content I appear in, that I do not want displayed 160

Request access to personal data 0

Bullying or Harassment 516

Inappropriate or Abusive Content 312

Other issue 778

Total 9,476

Of the other 9,835 reports where specialized review was needed, we reviewed content as per our
policies, and we took action on 4,849 reports in total. The remaining 4,986 reports were reviewed
but may not have been actioned due to the reasons explained above.

Orders from the GAC

This part of the report captures orders received from the Grievance Appellate Committee.

Table 7: Orders Received from the Grievance Appellate Committee (1 January, 2024 - 31
January, 2024)

Orders Received Orders Complied With

75 75

Note:
● Reports in the above categories containing legal processes, including but not limited to court orders, court
decisions, statutory declarations, or cease & desist letters, are escalated for legal review.
● Individuals identifying themselves as law enforcement are requested to submit their requests through the Law
Enforcement Online Request System (LEORS), an online portal for law enforcement reporting wherein their
identity may be verified.

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● Reports from a government official or a court officer seeking to submit an order, notice or direction are
escalated for legal review.
● In Intellectual Property infringement cases, we direct the reporter to the form on ‘Reporting a Violation or
Infringement of Your Rights’. The data on grievances received from users in India for this category is excluded
from this report.
● In some cases, our reviewers may determine that an issue was mis-categorized in the original report, and
escalate the report to specialized review under the right categories. Where applicable, we will include these in
the final numbers for actions taken.
● In certain cases, reporters may include multiple URLs in their report. If an action is taken on any one of these
URLs in a single report, the report will be listed as actioned.

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