Facebook blames its algorithms for Kisan Ekta Morcha page ban

The Kisan Ekta Morcha page on Facebook was blocked on Sunday by its automated systems – the algorithms – after it found “increased activity” and flagged it as spam for violating its community standards, the social media giant said.

Facebook banned the page sharing updates on farmer protests across the country citing its “Community Standards on Spam” but later restored it after widespread opposition on social media.

In an updated statement, Facebook said it restored the page in less than three hours after the US-based company became aware of the context.


“The review showed that only the Facebook page was affected by the automated systems, while the Instagram account remained unaffected,” it said. The page was being used by activists such as Yogendra Yadav, who tweeted on Sunday that he was in the midst of a Facebook Live through the Kisan Ekta Morcha's page when it was unpublished.

“There must be something about farmers that this govt is particularly scared of & something about this govt that Facebook is particularly scared of…” he posted on the microblogging platform.

“The vast majority of our work 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,” Facebook said in a statement on Monday.

In the third quarter of this year, out of the 1.9 billion pieces of content removed globally for violating its policies on spam, it restored 74.9 million pieces of content globally when it identified issues, Facebook added.