Koo censored 14.5% reported posts in July

As mandated by India’s new IT (information technology) rules, microblogging and social networking service Koo on Monday published its second compliance report, to disclose its censorship activities in July. 

The Twitter rival’s report for July 2021 showed that of the 3,431 Koos (posts on Koo) reported by the community, 498 (14.5%) were removed. Other action was taken against the rest of the 2,933 posts. 

Read: India sent maximum account information requests to Twitter during second half of 2020  

The report published the second month in a row aims to bring transparency to the process of enabling compliance requirements on social media, as per a statement from the Bengaluru based company. 

In accordance with rule 4(d) of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 of the Government of India, Koo and other significant social media firms operating in India are required to publish monthly compliance reports.  

Koo said it also took steps to proactively moderate 65,280 Koos, of which 1,887 (2.9%) were removed while other action was taken against the rest 63,393. 

Other action, Koo added, included overlay, blur, ignore, and warn against Koos that are non-compliant with Indian government guidelines. Koo hosts an in-house set of community guidelines as well. 

As per its website, censorship will be triggered if any content has elements of the following labels -- hate speech and discrimination, religiously offensive content, terrorism and extremism, violent content, graphic, obscene and sexual content, sexual harassment and non-consensual nudity, cyberbullying, invasion of privacy, illegal activities, identity theft and impersonation, misinformation and fake news, spamming, scamming and phishing, intellectual property infringement, and malicious programmes. 

In June, Koo had moderated 54,235 pieces of content. Launched in 2020 by Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawtka, Tiger Global backed Koo claimed to have 6 million users on its platform in May. 

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