Google India removed over 1,50,000 pieces of content from its social media platforms in May and June last, following complaints received from individual users, according to the transparency report released by it on Friday.
Additionally, it took removal actions on about 11,61,223 pieces of content as a result of automated detection processes during the two months.
The report follows the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 that came into force on May 26. The Rules require social media platforms with more than 50 lakh users in India to publish compliance report every month, mentioning the details of complaints received and action taken.
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As per the report for May, Google removed 71,132 pieces of content from its platforms, following 34,883 complaints received from individual users located in India via the designated mechanisms. In 98.9% of the instances, the removal action was taken due to copyright related issues. Other reasons for content removal include issues related to defamation, counterfeit, circumvention and graphic sexual content. “We evaluate content reported to us under our Community Guidelines, content policies and/or legal policies. Based on this review, removal action may be taken for one of the request reasons…,” the report said.
Each unique URL in a specific complaint was considered an individual ‘item’ and a single complaint may specify multiple items that potentially related to the same or different pieces of content.
In June, Google received 36,265 complaints from individual users located in India via the designated mechanisms, resulting in removal of 83,613 pieces of content. The content removed under ‘Copyright’ continued to account for majority 99.3% of the removals.
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Automated detection
The report stated that Google removed 6,34,357 pieces of content in May and 5,26,866 in June as a result of automated detection. “...we invest heavily in fighting harmful content online and use technology to detect and remove it from our platforms. This includes using automated detection processes for some of our products to prevent the dissemination of harmful content such as child sexual abuse material and violent extremist content,” it said.
Automated detection enabled the company to act more quickly and accurately to enforce its guidelines and policies, it noted. “These removal actions may result in removing the content or terminating a bad actor's access to the Google service,” it pointed out.
The volume of automated detection was close to 10x that of user complaints.
Google had published its maiden report in June last, which stated that the company had removed about 59,350 pieces of content from its social media platforms in April, following over 27,700 complaints received from individual users in India.