ShareChat Took Down 1.6 Mn Posts For Abusive, Sexually Explicit Content

ShareChat logged close to 5 Mn user complaints (49,79,832) through various local grievance redressal mechanisms in the country in August 2022. 

The homegrown social media platform made the disclosure as part of its monthly compliance report mandated under the new IT Rules.

A bulk of the complaints were clubbed under the ‘Others’ category (1.3 Mn), followed close by grievances related to abusive language (1.2 Mn), sexually explicit content (0.47 Mn), among others.

In its monthly report, Sharechat also said that it received seven legal notices from law enforcement agencies in August. Of these, it processed six requests where user data was provided by authorities. Besides, it also initiated a takedown or ban action in three of these instances where the user purportedly violated the platform’s community guidelines.

Sharechat also took down 3.3 Mn pieces of user generated content (UGC) for violation of community guidelines. Apart from this, the social media platform also actioned 2.45 Lakh pieces of sexually explicit content and removed 28,207 pieces of content for copyright violations. 

68,293 comments and 490 chat rooms were also deleted during the regular sweep by the homegrown social media giant in the month of August.

Sharechat also ‘permanently’ terminated 2,254 user accounts during the month for repeatedly breaching community guidelines. Under the ‘permanent’ ban, the startup terminates the accounts of customers for 360 days. 

Besides, the social media platform also imposed a 360-day UGC ban on 3,875 users which bars users from posting any content on their profiles. It also sanctioned ‘Edit Profile Ban’on 2,632 users for a period of 360 days which prevents a user from editing any attributes of their profile for the said period. Sharechat also banned 2,175 users from commenting for a period of 360 days. 

Apart from this, the social media giant also imposed these different types of bans on users from periods ranging from a day to the aforementioned 360 days. 

In July, Sharechat received more than 5.4 Mn user complaints, with abusive language and sexually explicit content accounting for a major chunk of these grievances. 

In its latest compliance report for the month of August, social media group Meta said that it took action against 23.78 Mn pieces of content across Facebook and Instagram platforms. Twitter also received 598 complaints and took down around 60,000 handles for promoting content related to terrorism and child sexual exploiattion. 

Meanwhile, WhatsApp banned 2.3 Mn accounts in August, while search giant Google India received 37,282 complaints during the month from individual users and actioned 1.38 Lakh  content pieces based on those grievances.

Under the new IT Rules 2021, social media platforms with a user base exceeding 5 Mn are mandatorily required to publish monthly compliance reports.