At a time when social media platforms are looking at ways to curb misinformation, Instagram India policy head Natasha Jog said the company has been following a remove, reduce, inform approach to tackle hate speech, fake accounts and other misleading content.
In order to ensure safety and privacy of users, Instagram removes all content that violate its community standards and ad policies such as hate speech, terrorist content. For content identified misinformation by its fact-checking partners, the company reduces its distribution within News Feed and applies warning labels.
“We want users to make an informed choice when they are consuming any news but we don’t want to be the arbiters of truth. We don’t want to be the ones to say what is right and what is not. This is why we rely on International Fact Checking Network-certified fact checkers and our fact checking partners,” Jog told FE in an interaction.
On why the platform does not completely take down any misinformation, Jog said, “We don’t want to take away people’s rights to be able to say, but that does not mean that you should get distribution for (misinformation). That does not mean that you should get visibility for it. And we will make sure that people know that this was found to be incorrect.”
In India, Meta works with 11 independent fact checkers who go through content in 15 languages. In February, Meta took down 28 million posts in India across Facebook and Instagram in compliance with the new IT Rules, 2021.
Across Meta-owned platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, misinformation such as involving risk of violence or physical harm, heatlh-related misinformation, manipulated media such as edited videos, etc, are removed.
Instagram is also looking to expand its language base in terms of fact checking but did not give a timeline. “We have come this far, and we are constantly looking to make a program more and more robust. And I think with that, we are at 15 (languages). Our effort is to really build out a comprehensive program, and we are looking at opportunities to build it up,” Jog said.
Lately, Big Tech firms like Google, Meta and others have presented a self-regulatory organisation kind of a model to fact check misleading content, after the government wanted them to intervene in the matter. For all information pertaining to the government on social media platforms, the ministry of electronics and IT (MeitY) will notify a fact-checking body, as per the amendment to the IT Rules.
With regard to safety and privacy of users, especially women and children, the company said it is constantly working with local experts to incorporate local context to policies which addresses issues like bullying and harassment, child sexual abuse, human exploitation, among others.
“We have launched several tools while building various age-appropriate measures and tools to ensure young people, women, parents and children continue to feel safe online. We now default teens under 18 into private accounts when they first join Facebook and Instagram,” Jog said.
“The advertisement targeting is also very restricted. We are doing a lot of work on age verification to try and identify what the age of our users is, we do not allow unconnected adults to reach out to minors,” Jog said, adding that the company has also bought changes where it does not show suspicious adults in ‘people you may know’ for minors.
Last year, Instagram launched family centre and parental supervision tools, which not only allow parents to keep a track of activities of their child on the platform but also educates them on topics like social media through helpful articles, videos and tips.
On the issue of under-reporting of age by minors on the platform, Jog said, “The reason why we are using a lot of age verification technologies is to also help us identify what age the person is. Anyone can report an under-aged, and if that happens and we find that they are underrated, they will be taken off platform.”
As of January 2023, India had a total of 229 million Instagram users, the largest in the world, according to Statista.
