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There has been an astounding rise of around 37.82% in hate speech on social media platform Facebook and 86% jump in violent and inciting content on Instagram in April, according to a monthly report released by Meta reported widely in the media. A vast majority of the content in the report is based on detection by social media platforms before users reported to them.

According to this report released on May 31, Facebook detected 53,200 hate speech in April, which is 37.82% higher compared to 38,600 detected in March, on which the platform took action. The report also showed that Instagram acted on 77,000 violence and incitement-related content in April compared to 41,300 in March.

“We measure the number of pieces of content (such as posts, photos, videos or comments) we take action on for going against our standards. This metric shows the scale of our enforcement activity.” “Taking action could include removing a piece of content from Facebook or Instagram or covering photos or videos that may be disturbing to some audiences with a warning,” the report said.

Hate speech biggest risk online

According to an earlier, much-quoted study, certain online risks for Indian users remain, especially hate speech. Microsoft released its annual study, “Civility, Safety, and Interactions Online – 2020” along with findings from its 2020 Digital Civility Index (DCI).

Hate speech has doubled from 2016 to 26 per cent. There has also been a 5 per cent increase in hoaxes, scams, and frauds from 2017 to 22 per cent, and 6 per cent increase in discrimination since 2016 to 16 per cent, as per the report.

The risks faced by online users are increasingly anonymous and recent. 20 per cent of Indian respondents reported that they experienced an online risk in the past week while 47 per cent said that the risk they experienced came from strangers online.