Automated systems flagged ‘Kisan Ekta Morcha’ page: Facebook

A day after facing flak for briefly blocking the "Kisan Ekta Morcha" page on Facebook, the social networking giant on Monday said that the action was taken after its automated systems flagged the page as spam.

The agitating farmers unions on Sunday alleged that Facebook had blocked their page at the Central government's behest after they published a video countering its claims on farm laws.

Facebook restored the page after massive social media outrage over blocking the page.

"As per our review, our automated systems found an increased activity on the Facebook page www.facebook.com/kisanektamorcha and flagged it as spam, which violates our Community Standards," a Facebook company spokesperson said in a statement.

"We restored the page in less than 3 hours when we 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," the spokesperson said.

Facebook said that the Kisan Ekta Morcha page is not the only one that has been restored after being flagged by its automated system as spam.

In the third quarter of this year, out of the 1.9 billion pieces of content removed globally for violating Facebook's policies on spam, the company restored 74.9 million pieces of content globally where it identified issues through human review team.

"The vast majority of our work fighting spam is done automatically using recognisable patterns of problematic behaviour," the Facebook spokesperson said.

"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."