Clarifying the reason behind the suspension of the Kisan Ekta Morcha page, 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.
A Facebook page “Kisan Ekta Morcha“, which was set up by farmer organisations’ “IT Cell” to “counter misinformation”, was taken down by Facebook on Sunday for a few hours. According to a statement issued by the Sanyukt Kisan Morcha, at 7 pm, a Facebook live was being streamed from the page where they were talking about how they had reached 94 lakh people through the page. “The page was unpublished at 7 pm. We had started a live (streaming), telling people that Kisan Ekta Morcha’s Facebook reach was 94 lakh and the page was unpublished. We will address a proper press conference tomorrow with all farm leaders… the page was (later) republished,” the statement said.
The removal caused outrage on social media, with people questioning why the page was taken down. 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.
