Social media platform Helo — which focusses on Indian language users — said it has removed about 1.6 lakh accounts and 5 million posts from its platform over the last 10 months after they were found to be violating its guidelines.

The platform, which is operated by China’s ByteDance that also runs TikTok, started its services in India in June last year.

“We started Helo last year in June with the aim of providing users of Indian languages a platform to connect and communicate in a safe environment. It is an India-focussed app and we have seen a strong adoption not only in the country but also among the Indian diaspora in the US, Malaysia, Nepal and other countries,” Shyamanga Barooah, head of content operations at Helo, said.

He added that platform currently has about 40 million users and supports 14 Indian languages.

“User safety is a prime focus for us. In the last 10 months, we have taken down 1.6 lakh accounts and about five million posts that were found to be violating our community guidelines,” he said.

Asked if the removed content was political in nature, Barooah said “political-centric fake content was 0.07 per cent of the total content that was removed, it was very minüscule.

He said users are sharing content across the spectrum like hyperlocal news and couplets, while celebrities and influencers are using the platform to connect to their audience in various Indian languages like Telugu, Kannada and Gujarati among others.

According to a report by Google, the number of Internet users in Indian languages is expected to reach 536 million over the next three years, contributing 35 per cent of $4.4 billion digital ad spend in the country. The share of local languages in ad spend is estimated to be about 5 per cent.

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