Kisan Ekta Morcha’s Facebook accounts were blocked for three hours on Sunday.
New Delhi:
Facebook clarified today that a mistake on its part led to the blocking of accounts used by farmers protesting Sunday against the government’s new farm laws. The social networking site said its automated systems flagged Kisan Ekta Morcha’s pages as “spam” following increased activity, although the group’s Instagram account (owned by Facebook) was not affected.
“According to our review, our automated systems found increased activity on the Facebook page www.facebook.com/kisanektamorcha and marked it as spam, which violates our Community Guidelines. We restored the page in less than three hours when we found out The review showed that only the Facebook page was affected by automated systems, while the Instagram account was not affected, “Facebook said in a statement.
The company added that while it relies on automated systems to detect spam, it also uses human experience to understand the context behind increased activity on a page. “The vast majority of our work in the fight against spam is done automatically through recognizable patterns of problem behavior. For example, if an account is posted over and over again in rapid succession, it is a clear sign that something is wrong. However, we also rely on our human team review to work on cases where human expertise is needed to understand the context of a particular situation. In Q3 2020, of the 1.9 billion content removed globally for violating our policies on spam, we restore 74.9 million content globally, when we identify problems ourselves, “said a spokesman for the Facebook company
Facebook had removed Kisan Ekta Morcha’s community pages for about three hours on Sunday, prompting widespread criticism over what farmers said was an attempt to muzzle their voices.
According to the protesting groups, the brakes came just after a live broadcast by Swaraj India chief Yogendra Yadav, who is one of the protest leaders, where he announced that farmers will participate in an indefinite relay hunger strike that started today. .
Kisan Ekta Morcha is one of the most important pages used for movement. His Instagram page has gained more than 50,000 new subscribers over the weekend and nearly doubled his number of followers, according to web analysis. Meanwhile, the movement’s official YouTube channel garnered an additional 3.95,000 subscribers.
Thousands of farmers have been camping on New Delhi’s borders for more than three weeks, demanding that the central government reverse reforms aimed at attracting investment in the antiquated agricultural sector, but which farmers say will leave them at the mercy of the big boys. corporations.
The protesters, led by around 40 unions, have repeatedly rebuffed attempts by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his ministers to compromise, in what has become the biggest challenge for the country’s farmers in his six-year term. .
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