Facebook and Twitter vs India: A big tech fight is gearing up
India is growing increasingly assertive in its efforts to control online communications, challenging Twitter and Facebook’s practices and threatening to set a precedent that could extend far beyond its borders.
The largest US internet firms are fighting new intermediary rules issued by Narendra Modi’s government in February that they say curtail privacy and free speech. Officials have demanded Facebook and Twitter take down hundreds of posts this year, divulge sensitive user information and submit to a regulatory regime that includes potential jail terms for executives if companies don’t comply.
While the administration’s push to exert more control over user data and online discourse reflects efforts globally to come to grips with tech giants and their enormous influence, the stakes in India are particularly high for internet firms because — shut out of China — it’s the only billion-person market up for grabs. Unlike authoritarian regimes such as Beijing, critics fear actions taken by the world’s largest democracy could offer a template for other governments to encroach on personal privacy in the name of domestic security.
“India has introduced draconian changes to its rules,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote in April. They “create new possibilities for government surveillance of citizens. These rules threaten the idea of a free and open internet built on a bedrock of international human rights standards”.
Holding internet companies responsible for content posted — and in some cases, executives personally liable — goes beyond what many countries demand and is a key point of dispute. Caught in this tug-of-war are hundreds of millions in India whose way of engaging with the internet now hangs in the balance. Facebook’s WhatsApp is in court arguing the new rules would circumvent its encryption, a key feature the company has touted in global marketing.
Modi’s administration has trained its sights on Twitter in recent months, given its role as the social platform of choice for politicians and celebrities. Cabinet ministers have accused the US company of defying orders and suggested it should be stripped of its intermediary status — making it directly accountable for content posted by its users. In May, Twitter slapped a “manipulated media” label on tweets from several accounts linked to Modi’s party. Police investigators have since called on senior executives and its offices, placing business in the world’s second most-populous nation at risk.
“Twitter is in a no-win situation here,” says Mike Masnick, founder of tech policy blog Techdirt. “Giving in to excessive government demands not only suppresses important speech, but opens the company up to even further pressure to silence critics of the government in India and elsewhere.”
Representatives for the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity) that oversees regulation did not respond to several calls and emails seeking comment. WhatsApp and Twitter representatives declined to comment beyond past statements that they will aim to comply with government regulations.
(Bloomberg)
India has said it welcomes criticism and dissent and its new rules are aimed at safeguarding public order and preventing harmful content such as child pornography and abuse videos. The country in recent years has grappled with an explosion of fake news across social media, much of it targeted at a largely first-time internet audience unaccustomed to sifting through online falsehoods. It came into conflict with Facebook in 2018 when the government asked WhatsApp to curb the spread of messages in connection with two dozen lynchings. Facebook’s response then was to restrict the forwarding of messages and label them as “forwarded”.
WhatsApp has more than 530 million users in India, YouTube has about 450 million and Facebook has over 410 million users, making it the biggest market for all three. Twitter, a comparative minnow with 17.5 million users, counts India among its fastest-growing territories. But that limited reach makes it vulnerable in a nation that showed itself willing to outlaw popular foreign services a year ago when it banned TikTok — which had signed up 200 million users in the country — WeChat and hundreds more China-made apps after a violent clash on the disputed border between the two countries.
As in the US, however, Twitter wields influence disproportionate to its size. It’s vital to political discussion in India and Modi himself is an avid user and enjoys a following of more than 69 million, showing its international reach. While ministers have tweeted belligerently about Twitter, none have yet openly voiced the threat of banning it.
Even while clashing with China, India may still draw inspiration from its neighbour’s experience, where the void left by foreign social platforms blocked for opposing stringent censorship created room for homegrown alternatives to develop. In fact, Modi’s colleagues have been actively touting Koo, a local micro-blogging rival.
“I have to imagine that Modi is looking at China and thinking they can have economic prosperity while also exercising a lot of authoritarian control over speech and communications,” says Katie Harbath, a former Facebook public policy director who worked with the country’s officials between the autumn of 2013, ahead of Modi’s first election as prime minister, until earlier this year. “So the big question is what direction will India go?”
Silicon Valley’s social media platforms have a huge base in India and the confrontation is over who controls these users
Much of the current rancor stems from the government’s push to control the conversation around farmer protests that have been going on since November, centred on proposals to tax agricultural inputs and remove minimum price support. The administration compelled Twitter to block some popular figures expressing support for the protesters — such as Punjabi singer JazzyB, whose account has 1.2 million followers but can’t be accessed within India — though the company hasn’t enacted all of its requests.
US and EU lawmakers should be paying closer attention to the South Asian country, Harbath says. Like Masnick, she sees few good options for private companies to oppose laws handed down from above, and it would be up to the international community to steer India back toward a more liberal path.
The US has embraced India in recent years as a counterweight to China, boosting defence cooperation as part of the four-nation Quad group that also includes fellow democracies Japan and Australia. For its part, Modi’s administration has sought to attract firms seeking to diversify supply chains away from China — giving it an incentive to maintain good relations with the Biden administration and the American business community at large.
Relations with American social platforms were much warmer and more collaborative in the early years of the Modi government. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg hosted Modi for a town hall event at the company’s headquarters in 2015. The two men embraced and smiled for the cameras. But, Harbath says, whenever the administration’s popularity has slipped since then — after moves such as the sudden currency demonetization in 2016 — it has grown more aggressive in trying to steer the public narrative.
Most recently, Modi’s government has come under fire on Twitter from critics who say it bungled efforts to fight Covid-19. In response, it has sought to block recent criticism on Twitter, where the anger and disappointment in India’s leader are manifest.
“Silicon Valley’s social media platforms have a huge base in India and the confrontation is over who controls these users,” says Delhi-based Tarun Pathak, research director at Counterpoint. “In the next three to five years, some 300 million new users equaling the population of the US will get online in India, shifting the balance of power eastward for these companies.”
Twitter appointed an interim compliance officer two weeks ago, long after its peers had assigned permanent representatives, and that person reportedly quit the position. A company spokesperson declined to confirm or comment on the reasons.
Twitter was recently cited alongside journalists and opposition party leaders by police in Uttar Pradesh for hosting a video that provoked communal discord, according to local reports. Delhi police also said they were investigating another complaint against Twitter India chief Manish Maheshwari related to that video, which purported to show majority Hindus assaulting a minority Muslim man. The company has since removed the offending clip, offering no comment beyond its statement about complying with local laws. The Uttar Pradesh government has petitioned India’s Supreme Court to revoke a lower court’s protection of Maheshwari from arrest.
Without pressure on India to dial back its online powers — which The Washington Post’s editorial board called for last month — companies like Twitter will have to carefully weigh their decisions so as not to be ousted from a vast market while still upholding the principles they espouse, Harbath says.
It’s a delicate dance that’s becoming more common around the world. Countries as far afield as Australia, Poland and Nigeria are cracking down on social platforms, alleging they have excessive power to determine what is acceptable speech and are meddling with domestic affairs. Nigeria barred Twitter this month and Germany’s hate speech rules will require platforms to speedily take down illegal content or face penalties.
“It’s complicated. A decision taken by these companies in India will not be for India alone,” says Bangalore-based Prateek Waghre, a research analyst at the Takshashila Institution who studies the governance of digital platforms. “What they do here will serve as a template for the rest of the world.”
© The Washington Post
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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