Women In India Are Leaving 'Male-Dominated' Facebook? Meta Study Raises Some Concerns: Report

The most significant factor that's stalling Facebook's growth in India, its biggest market is Indian women keeping away from the social networking giant.

Many women in the country have shunned male-dominated Facebook because they're worried about their safety and privacy. Image: Getty

Among the many factors hindering Meta-owned Facebook's growth in India are content with nudity, literacy and regional language barriers, and the fact that most internet users in the country seek video content, its internal study has found. The most significant factor that is stalling Facebook's growth in India, its biggest market, is Indian women keeping away from the social networking giant, the study has found, news agency Reuters reported Thursday.

Many women in the country have shunned "male-dominated" Facebook because they are worried about their safety and privacy, the internal research conducted by Meta, which was not previously reported, found.

According to the company's internal employee forum, Facebook has shared that the study had been conducted over a period of more than two years and identified different roadblocks that are stopping Facebook's growth in India, the report said.

The study said Facebook users in India as of November 2021 stood at 450 million, which is more than any other country. In February this year, Facebook for the first time reported a loss in daily users globally, reporting lower-than-expected ad growth. The company had said it was the first sequential decline in its history.

"Concerns about content safety and unwanted contact impede women's FB use. Meta cannot succeed in India while leaving women behind," the study noted, Reuters said in its report after reviewing it.

However, a Meta spokesperson was quoted as saying that "it's misleading to characterize 7-month-old research as an accurate or comprehensive representation of the state of our business in India".

Meta Platform's family of apps (FoA) include Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp and other services, and Facebook's growth lags Instagram and WhatsApp, the research added.