India tops in seeking to censor content: Facebook report

A transparency report released by Facebook on Friday has revealed that India leads in asking it to censor content.

According to the report, Facebook censored 4,765 pieces of content in India at the request of government authorities in  the second half of 2013.

Apart from censoring, the Indian government also sought information on many user accounts. In 2013 India made 3,598 requests, seeking information on 4,711 accounts.

This is Facebook's second government requests report covering the second half of 2013, and it expands its scope from the first one in two ways. First, it includes requests to restrict or remove users' content from the site, whereas the first report was limited to requests for account information. And second, the report now includes data on Instagram, the photo sharing app owned by Facebook.

The Facebook report shows that developing countries make more requests for seeking information on the accounts.

The US, the United Kingdom and Italy are some of the developed countries that have made requests to seek information on thousands of Facebook accounts.

Besides Facebook, other companies like Yahoo, Google and Microsoft periodically release their own government request reports, as part of an effort to be more transparent to users.

The tallies have taken on increased significance following leaks about US government surveillance made by former contractor Edward Snowden.