India tops list for content removal requests on Facebook
Facebook receives most content removal requests from India according to a recent report.
Facebook has stated in a report that it has blocked content after government officials and the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (ICERT) reported that such posts were violating laws like criticizing a religion or the state.
Facebook revealed India made the highest requests for restricting content, followed by Turkey (2014),Pakistan (162), Israel (113), Germany (84) and France (80) in its second Government Requests Report.
The report also states that India made the second largest number of user requests at 3,598 just after the US, which made 12,598 user requests in the second half of 2013. In total, Facebook received over 28,000 government data requests during the July-December 2013 period. After US and India, Facebook got the most requests from UK (1,906 requests), Italy (1,699), Germany (1,687) and France (1,661).
On blocking content, Facebook said, “We restricted access in India to a number of pieces of content reported primarily by law enforcement officials and the ICERT under local laws prohibiting criticism of a religion or the state.”
“Requests are scrutinized to determine if the specified content does indeed violate local laws. If, after a thorough legal analysis, we determine that the content appears to violate local law, then we make it unavailable in the relevant country or territory,” it added.
Facebook has over a 100 million users in India, second only after US, which has over 182 million users. According to reports India may soon surpass US to become the biggest Facebook population.
According to the Google transparency report published in December, content removal requests from India have grown by over 90 percent in July-December 2013, from over a year ago in the July-December 2012 period. Google says that it received over 2,540 requests from the Indian government and courts for content removal from July-December 2013.
Source: PTI