Social media giant Facebook in its latest report said that it has received 40,300 requests from the Government of India (GoI) for user data in the second half of 2020. This was 13.3 per cent higher from the January-June 2020 period when India had made 35,560 total requests, according to Facebook’s latest Transparency Report.
The US-based Facebook had restricted access to 878 items in India during the second half of 2020 in response to directions from the IT Ministry for violating Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000, including content against the security of the state and public order. According to the report, India made 40,300 total requests in the July-December 2020 period, of which 37,865 were legal process requests and 2,435 were emergency disclosure requests. The number of total requests made by India ranked second to the US, which had made 61,262 requests during the July-December 2020 period.
The social media giant also released its Community Standards Enforcement Report for the first quarter of 2021.
Globally, government requests for user data increased by about 10 per cent to 191,013 in the second half of 2020 from 173,592 in the first half of 2020. Information related to 62,754 users/ accounts were requested in India, and some data was produced for 52 per cent of the requests.
“Facebook responds to government requests for data in accordance with applicable law and our terms of service. Each and every request we receive is carefully reviewed for legal sufficiency and we may reject or require greater specificity on requests that appear overly broad or vague,” the report said.
Facebook said that during the July – December 2020 period, it had “restricted access in India to 878 items in response to directions from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology for violating Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000, including content against the security of the state and public order”. Of these, 10 were restricted temporarily, it added.
“We also restricted access to 54 items in compliance with court orders. In response to an order from Justice Alexandre de Moraes of Brazil’s Supreme Court related to 12 profiles and Pages of supporters of Brazilian President Bolsonaro, we restricted access globally to this content, including in India,” it added. Facebook noted that while it respects the law in countries where it operates, it “strongly” opposes extraterritorial legal demands such as the one resulting in these restrictions. The social media giant also released its Community Standards Enforcement Report for the first quarter of 2021.
As per the Community Standards Enforcement Report, content actioned on adult, nudity and sexual activity increased to 31.8 million in the first quarter of 2021 from 28.1 million pieces of content in the preceding quarter. The report found that the prevalence of hate speech content was between 0.05 per cent and 0.06 per cent of views in the first quarter of 2021, which marks a decrease from the fourth quarter of 2020.
[with PTI inputs]
- Prime Minister Narendra Modi: A Gujju businessman who does not invest his precious time for a losing battle - April 13, 2024
- NIA arrests two accused Shazib and Taahaa in Bengaluru’s Rameshwaram Cafe blast case from Kolkata - April 12, 2024
- National Herald scam: Adjudicating Authority upholds Rs.752 crore assets attached by ED - April 11, 2024
[…] was not a good day for US social media giants Facebook and Twitter in Indian courts. On Thursday, the Delhi High Court granted two weeks’ to Twitter […]
[…] last US-based errant social media giants like Twitter, Facebook and Google are in hot water over their behaviour from Indian agencies. The totally defiant Twitter […]
Well instead of becoming a party to FB/Twitter to name a few by subscribing to such school dropouts idiotic manipulators APPs regulating our lives through addiction and boasting numerous followers of our own or our PM or Dr.S.Swamy et al, it is better to self regulate ourselves by unsubscribing/deleting accounts and stay safe with our personal privacy and data. Moreover there is no proper cyber Security regulations in our country and further the present government of denials itself does not like having a data towards policy interventions and runs away to hide its poor performances like an Ostrich!
Our PM, film stars and cricketers are not far behind in popularizing this or that foreign APPs or the media.Our PM hardly tweets a dozen time in a year, if I am not wrong! It is better to create employment by appointing experts in major segments dishing out authentic information through the horse mouth instead of depending on foreign based APPs and later begging or appealing either to delete or amend to retweet!! Atmanirbharata is a joke like Garibi Hatao!
There is no point in claiming that PM Modi is not like Fmr US President Donald Trump failing to punish this or that Big tech companies!!
Let us see how USA breakup such giants through antitrust biz activities.
Self regulation is the best regulation and try to help our own indigenous technologies if one intends to do business within India which is a very big market in itself.
Self regulation – is the language of cowards & directionless govts.
Stop becoming a subscriber to Facebook & Twitter. Self delete own accounts. Then Facebook & Twitter will fall on its own. First we give all information to Twitter & Facebook & upload our entire family photos & history & then claim data compromise or violation of confidential of information !! Utter foolishness
Meaningless statistics.