Facebook to train 5 million people with digital skills by three years!

Facebook’s programme have reached 29 states in India and have received strong response in states like Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Punjab and others.

Facebook vice president for public policy Richard Allan had said in October that the company will unveil a political ads archive for India before the 2019 general elections. 

Social media giant Facebook on Saturday said that to help small Indian businesses to reach the global economy, it is planning to train five million people with digital skills in three years. With ten ongoing programmes, Facebook has already trained one million people across 150 cities and 48,000 villages with support from 50 partners, the social networking giant said on the inaugural day of the two-day Facebook Community Boost programme aimed at helping small businesses gain digital marketing skills. These efforts - where the users are trained on using Facebook and photo-sharing platform, Instagram to build their business - are being organized under Facebook’s Community Boost programme.

"We have a very strong framework of partnership with local partners and state governments," Ankhi Das, Public Policy Director, India, South and Central Asia, told reporters here, adding that the company also works closely with the Ministry of Skill Development And Entrepreneurship on digital training. "We are very excited that our programmes such as Boost Your Business, She Means Business, that are run in partnership with State and Central Government, civil society and private institutions, focus on facilitating economic transformation and mainstreaming of small businesses at the grassroots level into the formal economy," she added. 

The training modules for these businesses in digital marketing and online safety - developed by Facebook - are available in 14 local languages.

Facebook’s programme will reach 29 states in India and have received strong response in states like Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Punjab, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Odisha and Rajasthan among others. Asked about steps being taken to curb abusive and hate speech on the platform, including those for businesses, Das said the company has already taken down over 1.5 billion pieces of content this year that were in that realm.

“We take the issue of hate speech, abuse very seriously. We are cognizant of our responsibility. We have partnered with civil society organisations to (jointly) work on community education. Apart from a big team of reviewers globally, we are also deploying AI (artificial intelligence) tool to flag such content,” she explained.

On political ads, Das said the issue is an important one and the company is working on it.