Facebook to release first interim complaints report on Friday

Facebook will publish an interim report on July 2, with details on the number of content it removed proactively in the one-month duration between May and June 15, the company said in a statement.

The final report, which will be published on July 15, will also contain details of user complaints received by the platform during this period, and the action taken by it. It will also contain data related to Facebook’s instant messaging app WhatsApp, a Facebook spokesperson said.

The report, being published by Facebook, is for compliance with the Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code, which required social media intermediaries with more than 50 lakh users to publish a monthly report on the number of complaints received, the action taken and the number of complaints resolved per month.

Facebook’s report will also include the specific communication links or parts of information that the platform has removed or disabled in the past one month by proactively monitoring the content on its platform.

Facebook publishes a report every six months where in it details the action it took on certain posts and content. According to the last report, between July and December 2020, Facebook restricted access to 878 items “in response to directions from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology for violating Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000”. “Of these, 10 were restricted temporarily. We also restricted access to 54 items in compliance with court orders,” the platform said.