India tops in asking Facebook to block undesirable content

Facebook restricted access to nearly 6,000 items on its website in India during July-December 2014 - the highest for any country - following requests from government and other agencies to block content on the social networking site.
Facebook on Monday released its Global Government Requests Report for the second half of 2014, underlining the ''increase in data requests from certain governments such as India''.  India tops the lists of countries demanding restriction on content with 5,832 pieces of content restricted - higher than the 4,960 pieces of content restricted during January-June 2014 period.

The US, however, was well ahead of India in the number of requests made – it asked for 14,274 blocks requests in the same period against India's 5,473 requests. This clearly indicates that Facebook is more willing to accommodate intolerant regimes than more liberal democracies like the US.

India is followed by Turkey at 3,624 restrictions granted. In contrast, Germany in third position but with a mere 60, requests granted, followed by Russia (55). Neighbour Pakistan is far behind India in this respect, at fifth position with a mere 54 block requests granted.

Governments usually contact Facebook to restrict access to content on the site that they believe violates their laws.

''We restricted access in India to content reported primarily by law enforcement agencies and the India Computer Emergency Response Team within the ministry of communications and information technology, including anti-religious content and hate speech that could cause unrest and disharmony," the California-based firm said.

According to Facebook, government officials sometimes make requests for data about people who use Facebook as part of official investigations.

The vast majority of these requests relate to criminal cases like robberies or kidnappings. In many of these cases, government requests seek basic subscriber information such as name and length of service. Other requests have asked for IP address logs or actual account content, it said.

''Overall, we continue to see an increase in government requests for data and content restrictions. The amount of content restricted for violating local law increased by 11 per cent over the previous half to 9,707 pieces of content restricted, up from 8,774. We saw a rise in content restriction requests from countries like Turkey and Russia, and declines in places like Pakistan,'' said a post by Monica Bickert, head of Facebook's global policy management, and Chris Sonderby, deputy general counsel.