Bhubaneswar: Continuing its crackdown against offensive social media content ahead of Phase IV elections in the state, the social media cell of Odisha Police Tuesday claimed the removal of 420 posts from platforms like Meta, Instagram, YouTube and X. Besides, five FIRs have been registered with the social media cell of Odisha Police and are currently being investigated. The Odisha Police claimed that these posts were taken down following the reports of violation of the model code of conduct. To tackle inflammatory or hateful content, the social media unit of the Crime Branch in the past had sent 788 requests for content takedown to Meta.
In response, the Meta has acted upon on 154 of these requests. The CB had earlier sent requests to Instagram for the removal of 471 posts, while requests were made to YouTube to take down 96 videos. Likewise, search giant Google has cooperated with the requests from CB by removing nine pieces of content, which were deemed inappropriate or harmful. Various social media cells of Odisha Police have stated that around 950 social media handles are under surveillance as they might disrupt the law and order situation with ‘hateful content’.
DEBADURLLAV HARICHANDAN, OP