Kisan Ekta Morcha page was marked ‘spam’ for increased activity, Facebook clarifies amid widespread outrage

New Delhi: Clarifying the reason behind the suspension of the Kisan Ekta Morcha page, social media giant Facebook on Monday said its automated systems found an increased activity on the page and flagged it as “spam”.

A company spokesperson pointed out that the page was restored within 3 hours. Facebook had on Sunday temporarily blocked the page of Kisan Ekta Morcha for allegedly “going against” the platform’s “Community Standards on spam”. The page, which was being used by the farmers protesting at the borders of the national capital, was later restored.

This is what they can do when people raise their voices…….

When they can't beat us ideologically…….#DigitalKisan #SuppressingTheVoiceOfDissent pic.twitter.com/foK6k5zzM3

— Kisan Ekta Morcha (@Kisanektamorcha) December 20, 2020

“As per our review, our automated systems found an increased activity on the Facebook page www.facebook.com/kisanektamorcha and flagged it as spam, which violates our Community Standards. We restored the page in less than 3 hours when we became aware of the context,” a Facebook spokesperson said on Monday.

The spokesperson said that the review showed that only the Facebook page was affected by the automated systems while the Instagram account remained unaffected. The company said that the vast majority of its work in fighting spam is done automatically using recognisable patterns of problematic behaviour.

“For example, if an account is posting over and over in quick succession that’s a strong sign something is wrong. However, we also rely on our human review team to work on cases where human expertise is needed to understand the context of a particular situation,” the spokesperson said.

“In Q3, 2020 out of the 1.9 billion pieces of content removed globally for violating our policies on spam, we restored 74.9 mn pieces of content globally, when we identified issues ourselves,” the spokesperson added.

This comes as thousands of farmers are protesting at the gates of Delhi against three recently passed farm laws. The Central government and farmer leaders are engaged in talks. However, all discussions have remained inconclusive so far.

This is how Twitter reacted:

In midst of a Facebook Live I was doing from Kisan Ekta Morcha's page, we get a notification that the FB page has been unpublished.

There must be something about farmers that this govt is particularly scared of & something about this govt that Facebook is particularly scared of https://t.co/yYCZu6r3UR pic.twitter.com/xjnpS7nRRi

— Yogendra Yadav (@_YogendraYadav) December 20, 2020

Short statement : The action taken by Facebook to close the Kisan Ekta Morcha requires a close look at its content moderation practices and polices. India has close to 300 million Facebook users. It’s largest market. Even then there is little transparency or accountability. 1/2

— Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) (@internetfreedom) December 20, 2020

This is what world seeing, India getting down in freedom index.

Latest example by un-publishing the Facebook page of @Kisanektamorcha .

We strongly opposes this act.#TooMuchDemocracy @Facebook pic.twitter.com/DXjzCVtmTZ

— Biased Media (@BiasedMedia7) December 20, 2020