Social media means the apps on which ordinary people post, share, chat and meet each other, together with the software that ranks what each person sees and keeps them safe. In India, much of it now happens in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and other Indian languages, not only in English.
Open the phone of a family in a small town in Uttar Pradesh, such as Bareilly. You may find a social app in Hindi, full of morning greetings, devotional songs and local news. There may be a short-video app with clips of local comedians. And the parents may be using a matrimony app to look for a match for their daughter. In this scene, publishing is no longer only for newsrooms. Ordinary people publish to each other.
Why Indian languages? Hundreds of millions of Indians came online on cheap phones and low-cost mobile data. Many of them read and write mainly in their own language. Global social apps were built in English first. So Indian companies built apps for these users. This is described in vernacular internet.
The first group of apps is for posting and watching. A vernacular social media app lets people post and chat in their own language. A short-video app shows a feed of clips a few seconds long, made by users. Both decide what to show each person with a recommendation system, software that ranks posts by what that person and people like them have watched before. A paid community platform lets the leader of a group, such as a town's traders, charge members a fee to join.
The second group of apps is for meeting someone. A dating app helps people find a friend or a date, often through voice calls rather than photos. A matrimonial website helps people find a spouse, and the search is often done by the family. Online matrimony is an industry that India built for itself.
How do these apps earn money? Social apps show ads between posts and videos. Users can also buy coins and send them as gifts during live chats, and the app keeps a share. This is explained in virtual currency. Dating and matrimony apps are free to join, but users pay for extras, such as contacting more people.
All these apps must catch fake profiles, scammers and harmful posts. This work is called trust and safety. A trust and safety investigation tool prepares each report for a human reviewer. Deepfake detection checks whether a photo, voice or video was made by AI.