Google, Facebook say ready to comply with revised IT rules
Google and Facebook have both expressed their readiness to comply with the revised Information Technology rules that come into effect from Wednesday, even as top officials told ET that the centre is yet to decide on granting an extension of the deadline for compliance.
The world’s largest social media platform Facebook, which also runs WhatsApp and Instagram, among the largest messaging and social media platforms in India– said that it “aims to comply” with the new Rules even as it “continues to discuss a few of the issues which need more engagement with the government,” a Facebook spokesperson told ET in a statement.
Search giant Google, while stating that it respects “India’s legislative process” said it has a long history of “responding to government requests to remove content” when the content violates the local law or its product policies.
A representative for the company said, “we have consistently invested in significant product changes, resources, and personnel to ensure that we’re combating illegal content in an effective and fair way, and in order to comply with local laws in the jurisdictions that we operate in.”
Even as they seek an extension of the deadline for compliance, internet majors have not indicated when they will be fully compliant with the revised regulations.
The government is yet to take a call on whether to grant an extension to large social media platforms by a few weeks to implement the new IT rules according to top officials in the know.
“No decision has been taken by the government on this yet. Companies have already represented (to us) for an extension,” they added.
A second official pointed out that as the revised rules have already been notified, “companies will have to abide by them, whether they like them or not. ”
ET had reported on Tuesday that social media platforms such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Google and Twitter
run the risk of losing their status as “intermediaries” and may become liable for criminal action if they do not comply with the revised regulations.
Industry executives said that while top internet companies had begun implementing some of the required provisions, the pandemic has delayed progress and an extension of a few weeks will help them complete the process of introducing relevant changes.
“Pursuant to the IT Rules, we are working to implement operational processes and improve efficiencies. Facebook remains committed to people’s ability to freely and safely express themselves on our platform,” a representative for Facebook stated.
For instance, many companies publish transparency reports on a quarterly or half-yearly basis but the new Rules mandate companies to file their reports on a monthly basis.
“This will require changes to the procedures, which are already underway but not completed yet,” said one of the people cited above.
In response to queries from ET a spokesperson for Google said, “We realize that our work in keeping our platforms secure is never done and we will continue to refine our existing approaches and evolve our policies and be as transparent as possible about how we make decisions.”
India is the largest market in terms of users for some of the world’s largest internet companies. These platforms were given three months’ time to comply with the new Information Technology rules that were notified by the centre in February.
India has fixed five million registered users as the threshold for defining a significant social media intermediary. It has directed appointment of a resident grievance officer, chief compliance officer and nodal contact person and to publish the details of these executives on their website, along with a physical contact address. The rules also mandate traceability of the originator of messages, along with a provision for voluntary verification as a means to establish user identity.
In a bid to persuade the government to reconsider some of the provisions, global internet majors have sought the intervention of industry associations including FICCI, CII, and the US-India Business Council to represent their case with the centre, while also seeking an extension of the deadline for compliance.
Meanwhile, the government has received widespread criticism of the action by a team of Delhi Police’s Special Cell, which visited the offices of micro-blogging site Twitter with regard to an ongoing investigation on tagging some tweets by BJP leaders as Manipulated Media.
“This wave of digital repression seeks to silence critics and frustrate public scrutiny of the many over-broad, opaque, rights-violating directives that are being made of online platforms in India,” said Raman Jit Singh Chima, Asia Pacific Policy Director at Access Now.
Every week over 1 billion people connect with businesses on our messaging apps. Many of these conversations are made possible by the thousands of developers who build innovative and engaging experiences on Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp.
Since opening access to our Llama family of large language models, we’ve seen lots of momentum and innovation with more than 30 million downloads to date. As our messaging services continue to evolve, we believe the technology from Llama and other generative AI models have the potential to enhance business messaging through more natural, conversational experiences.
At Connect Meta announced that developers will be able to build third-party AIs – a term we use to refer to our generative AI-powered assistants – for our messaging services.
We’re making it easy for any developer to get started, so we’re simplifying the developer onboarding process and providing access to APIs for AIs that make it possible to build new conversational experiences within our messaging apps.
All developers will be able to access the new onboarding experience and features on Messenger in the coming weeks. For WhatsApp, we’ll be opening a Beta program in November – if you’re interested in participating please sign up to the waitlist here to learn more.
We’ll keep everyone updated as we make these tools available to more developers later this year. We look forward to your feedback and seeing what you create.
First seen at developers.facebook.com
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
Meta Proposes Monthly Fee of Up to EUR 13 for Ad-Free Access to Instagram and Facebook: Report
Career stories: The math-music connection in data science
Enabling developers to create innovative AIs on Messenger and WhatsApp
Meta Used Public Instagram, Facebook Posts to Train Its New AI Assistant
WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger to Get AI Assistants; Meta Shows Off Image Generation Tool Emu
Meta Smart Glasses in Collaboration With Ray-Ban Launched, Allows Hands-Free Livestreaming
![top-social-media-manager-interview-questions-and-answers-[2023]](https://www.social-ping.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/130190-top-social-media-manager-interview-questions-and-answers-2023-80x80.png)
Top Social Media Manager Interview Questions and Answers [2023]
What Is FedRAMP, and Why Is It So Important?
Introducing Facebook Graph API v18.0 and Marketing API v18.0
Solving Espresso’s scalability and performance challenges to support our member base
WhatsApp Rolls Out New Instant Video Message Toggle for Android, iOS: Here’s How It Works
3 Ways To Find Your Instagram Reels History
-
Uncategorized2 weeks agoVanity Metrics: Definition & Examples for Marketing
-
LINKEDIN2 weeks agoCareer stories: Influencing engineering growth at LinkedIn
-
Uncategorized7 days ago5 B2B Social Media Marketing Tactics That Actually Work
-
![2023-average-engagement-rates-for-13-industries-[stats]](https://www.social-ping.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/134947-2023-average-engagement-rates-for-13-industries-stats-400x240.png)
![2023-average-engagement-rates-for-13-industries-[stats]](https://www.social-ping.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/134947-2023-average-engagement-rates-for-13-industries-stats-80x80.png)
Uncategorized1 week ago2023 Average Engagement Rates for 13 Industries [STATS]
-
OTHER2 weeks agoCCI Said to Have Appointed Former WhatsApp Executive, Government Officials as New Members
-
OTHER2 weeks agoYouTube Announces AI-Enabled Editing Products for Video Creators
-
Uncategorized2 weeks agoInstagram Emoji Guide: Meanings, Reactions, Ideas
-
Uncategorized2 weeks agoHow To Save Tons of Time With Instagram Auto Reply