In India, Facebook and Twitter walk censorship tightrope with government
When Facebook and Twitter sought to limit the extent to which their platforms could be used to spread disinformation related to last year’s presidential election, Amal Chandra, a 22-year-old university student in Kerala, India, applauded their efforts.
Now, Chandra, who studies political science at Pondicherry University, is wondering why the same companies are complying with demands by the Indian government to remove social media posts critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“During the U.S. presidential election, we saw a fair, neutral, objective position from the side of social media,” Chandra said in an interview. “So why can’t they do the same in India?”
In recent days, the social media giants removed about 100 posts in India following an emergency order by Modi’s government at a time when the prime minister, previously criticized for downplaying the severity of the pandemic, is faced with a surge of hundreds of thousands of positive coronavirus cases to which the government has been slow to respond.
Then, last Thursday, Facebook temporarily hid posts containing the hashtag #ResignModi. The company said it had done so by “mistake” and “not because the Indian government asked us to,” and said the posts were restored to the platform.
The government said the originally removed posts threatened public safety, undermined the government’s efforts to fight the pandemic, or sought to spread misleading information. Individuals who have used social media to seek medical help and supplies have also been persecuted, according to reports.
But those critical of Modi, who leads the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, say the order was designed to silence free speech and political dissent. Chandra, who describes himself as a center-left liberal, was disappointed when the companies complied with the order.
“In every country, they should be respectful of democracy and dissent and they should not succumb to the anti-democratic directions of the government,” he said. “We have a constitution which guarantees the right to free expression and reasonable criticism, so why should Twitter or Facebook succumb to the government’s pressure?”
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Beyond its explanation for the temporary removal of #ResignModi posts, Facebook declined to comment on the removal of posts at the government’s behest. In a statement, a spokesperson for Twitter said the removals from its platform were in accordance with Indian law.
“When we receive a valid legal request, we review it under both the Twitter Rules and local law. If the content violates Twitter’s rules, the content will be removed from the service,” the spokesperson said. “If it is determined to be illegal in a particular jurisdiction, but not in violation of the Twitter rules, we may withhold access to the content in India only.”
Some advocates have slammed the companies for complying with the order, citing Facebook’s partnership with the Global Network Initiative, a coalition that seeks to limit online censorship by autocratic governments, and Twitter’s stated mission to “serve the public conversation.”
“Facebook, Twitter, and other technology companies have a responsibility to respect human rights, including right to free speech,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at Human Rights Watch, in an email interview. “Online censorship can have a debilitating effect on dissent. It is important for companies to protect the human rights of their users and not censor information in violation of international standards.”
Despite the Indian government’s order, the companies “should interpret and implement legal demands as narrowly as possible, to ensure the least possible restriction on expression, notify users, seek clarification or modification from authorities, and explore all legal options for challenge,” Ganguly said.
But the choice by social media companies facing government demands isn’t only a moral one but a business decision, too. India has more than 755 million internet users — second in the world only to China — making it an attractive market for U.S. companies. Modi’s use of the country’s digital regulation laws places the companies in an unenviable position.
“Even if you don’t agree, you will have to comply if you want to operate in India,” said Rohin Garg, associate policy counsel at the Internet Freedom Foundation, a New Delhi-based nonprofit organization. “Facebook is a large company. If they have to optimize between revenue and free speech, we know which way it’s going to go.”
Garg said that in theory, it is a good thing that international companies are subject to the laws in each jurisdiction where they operate.
“But because the government is able to bend the rules without including accountability or transparency measures in their legislation, they can take advantage of that and do what they want,” he said.
India’s current digital regulations, established in 2000, were amended by the Modi administration earlier this year amid massive protests by farmers. The regulations gave the government more power over large online companies, including the authority to demand the removal of content threatening to “the sovereignty and integrity of India.”
Around the same time, the government threatened to imprison India-based Twitter employees if the company did not block accounts related to the protests; Twitter did so, but left intact accounts belonging to officials, journalists and activists.
Critics of the regulations say they could deepen India’s democratic backsliding under Modi.
Garg says the ideal solution would include greater accountability and transparency for both the government and social media companies.
“So the private sector can’t do what it wants willy-nilly, and the government can’t do what it wants willy-nilly, which would sort of mutually enforce an equilibrium of, at least, relative integrity,” Garg said. “Right now we have neither in India.”
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Today, we are releasing Facebook Graph API v18.0 and Marketing API v18.0. As part of this release, we are highlighting changes below that we believe are relevant to parts of our developer community. These changes include announcements, product updates, and notifications on deprecations that we believe are relevant to your application(s)’ integration with our platform.
For a complete list of all changes and their details, please visit our changelog.
General Updates
Consolidation of Audience Location Status Options for Location Targeting
As previously announced in May 2023, we have consolidated Audience Location Status to our current default option of “People living in or recently in this location” when choosing the type of audience to reach within their Location Targeting selections. This update reflects a consolidation of other previously available options and removal of our “People traveling in this location” option.
We are making this change as part of our ongoing efforts to deliver more value to businesses, simplify our ads system, and streamline our targeting options in order to increase performance efficiency and remove options that have low usage.
This update will apply to new or duplicated campaigns. Existing campaigns created prior to launch will not be entered in this new experience unless they are in draft mode or duplicated.
Add “add_security_recommendation” and “code_expiration_minutes” to WA Message Templates API
Earlier this year, we released WhatsApp’s authentication solution which enabled creating and sending authentication templates with native buttons and preset authentication messages. With the release of Graph API v18, we’re making improvements to the retrieval of authentication templates, making the end-to-end authentication template process easier for BSPs and businesses.
With Graph API v18, BSPs and businesses can have better visibility into preset authentication message template content after creation. Specifically, payloads will return preset content configuration options, in addition to the text used by WhatsApp. This improvement can enable BSPs and businesses to build “edit” UIs for authentication templates that can be constructed on top of the API.
Note that errors may occur when upgrading to Graph API v18 if BSPs or businesses are taking the entire response from the GET request and providing it back to the POST request to update templates. To resolve, the body/header/footer text fields should be dropped before passing back into the API.
Re-launching dev docs and changelogs for creating Call Ads
- Facebook Reels Placement for Call Ads
Meta is releasing the ability to deliver Call Ads through the Facebook Reels platform. Call ads allow users to call businesses in the moment of consideration when they view an ad, and help businesses drive more complex discussions with interested users. This is an opportunity for businesses to advertise with call ads based on peoples’ real-time behavior on Facebook. Under the Ad set Level within Ads Manager, businesses can choose to add “Facebook Reels” Under the Placements section. - Re-Launching Call Ads via API
On September 12, 2023, we’re providing updated guidance on how to create Call Ads via the API. We are introducing documentation solely for Call Ads, so that 3P developers can more easily create Call Ads’ campaigns and know how to view insights about their ongoing call ad campaigns, including call-related metrics. In the future, we also plan to support Call Add-ons via our API platform. Developers should have access to the general permissions necessary to create general ads in order to create Call Ads via the API platform.Please refer to developer documentation for additional information.
Deprecations & Breaking Changes
Graph API changes for user granular permission feature
We are updating two graph API endpoints for WhatsAppBusinessAccount. These endpoints are as follows:
- Retrieve message templates associated with WhatsAppBusiness Account
- Retrieve phone numbers associated with WhatsAppBusiness Account
With v18, we are rolling out a new feature “user granular permission”. All existing users who are already added to WhatsAppBusinessAccount will be backfilled and will continue to have access (no impact).
The admin has the flexibility to change these permissions. If the admin changes the permission and removes access to view message templates or phone numbers for one of their users, that specific user will start getting an error message saying you do not have permission to view message templates or phone numbers on all versions v18 and older.
Deprecate legacy metrics naming for IG Media and User Insights
Starting on September 12, Instagram will remove duplicative and legacy, insights metrics from the Instagram Graph API in order to share a single source of metrics to our developers.
This new upgrade reduces any confusion as well as increases the reliability and quality of our reporting.
After 90 days of this launch (i.e. December 11, 2023), we will remove all these duplicative and legacy insights metrics from the Instagram Graph API on all versions in order to be more consistent with the Instagram app.
We appreciate all the feedback that we’ve received from our developer community, and look forward to continuing to work together.
Please review the media insights and user insights developer documentation to learn more.
Deprecate all Facebook Wi-Fi v1 and Facebook Wi-Fi v2 endpoints
Facebook Wi-Fi was designed to improve the experience of connecting to Wi-Fi hotspots at businesses. It allowed a merchant’s customers to get free Wi-Fi simply by checking in on Facebook. It also allowed merchants to control who could use their Wi-Fi and for how long, and integrated with ads to enable targeting to customers who had used the merchant’s Wi-Fi. This product was deprecated on June 12, 2023. As the partner notice period has ended, all endpoints used by Facebook Wi-Fi v1 and Facebook Wi-Fi v2 have been deprecated and removed.
API Version Deprecations:
As part of Facebook’s versioning schedule for Graph API and Marketing API, please note the upcoming deprecations:
Graph API
- September 14, 2023: Graph API v11.0 will be deprecated and removed from the platform
- February 8, 2024: Graph API v12.0 will be deprecated and removed from the platform
- May 28, 2024: Graph API v13.0 will be deprecated and removed from the platform
Marketing API
- September 20, 2023: Marketing API v14.0 will be deprecated and removed from the platform
- September 20, 2023: Marketing API v15.0 will be deprecated and removed from the platform
- February 06, 2024: Marketing API v16.0 will be deprecated and removed from the platform
To avoid disruption to your business, we recommend migrating all calls to the latest API version that launched today.
Facebook Platform SDK
As part of our 2-year deprecation schedule for Platform SDKs, please note the upcoming deprecations and sunsets:
- October 2023: Facebook Platform SDK v11.0 or below will be sunset
- February 2024: Facebook Platform SDK v12.0 or below will be sunset
First seen at developers.facebook.com
Before today (August 28, 2023), advertisers could not promote images and/or videos used in Instagram Stories as ads via the Instagram Marketing API. This process created unwanted friction for our partners and their customers.
After consistently hearing about this pain point from our developer community, we have removed this unwanted friction for advertisers and now allow users to seamlessly promote their image and/or video media used in Instagram Stories as ads via the Instagram Marketing API as of August 28, 2023.
We appreciate all the feedback received from our developer community, and hope to continue improving your experience.
Please review the developer documentation to learn more.
First seen at developers.facebook.com
Launching second release of Facebook Reels API: An enterprise solution for desktop and web publishers
We’re excited to announce that the second release of FB Reels API is now publicly available for third-party developers. FB Reels API enables users of third-party platforms to share Reels directly to public Facebook Pages and the New Pages Experience.
FB Reels API has grown significantly since the first release in September 2022. The new version of the APIs now support custom thumbnails, automatic music tagging, tagging collaborators, longer format of reels and better error handling.
FB Reels API will also support scheduling and draft capability to allow creators to take advantage of tools provided either by Meta or by our partners. Based on the feedback we received from our partners, we’ll now provide additional audio insights via the Audio Recommendations API and reels performance metrics via the Insights API.
Our goal in the next couple of releases is to continue to make it easier for creators to develop quality content by adding features like early copyright detection and A/B testing. We’re also excited to start working on enhanced creation features like Video clipping- so stay tuned to hear more about those features in the future.
Call-to-Action
If you are a developer interested in integrating with the Facebook Reels API, please refer to the Developer Documents for more info.
Not sure if this product is for you? Check out our entire suite of sharing offerings.
Tune in to Product @scale event to learn more about FB Video APIs and hear from some of our customers.
First seen at developers.facebook.com
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