Facebook witnesses over 100% rise in content restrictions request led by India

Facebook received more government requests for user data in the second half of 2018 globally, a rise of 7% from the first half of 2018, according to its latest Transparency Report.

Most of these requests came from the US, followed by India, the UK, Germany and France.

The social media giant termed the uptick in the second half of last year as normal compared with previous reporting periods.

Guy Rosen, Facebook VP of Integrity, said that in the second half of 2018, government requests for user data increased globally from 103,815 to 110,634.

In the same period, the requests from US were actually down 3% from the first half of 2018, adding that 58% of those included nondisclosure orders.

There was also a spike in the volume of content restrictions based on local laws by 135% in the second half of 2018 from the first half of last year, jumping from 15,337 to 35,972. The uptick was primarily caused by an order issued by the Delhi High Court regarding claims made about PepsiCo products, which accounted for 16,600 of those restrictions.

India also accounted for 85% of total new global disruptions. There were 53 disruptions of Facebook services in nine countries during the second half of last year, compared with 48 disruptions in eight countries during the previous reporting period.

The California-based company also removed around 2,595,410 pieces of content from Facebook and Instagram platforms during the second half of 2018, based on 511,706 copyright reports.  As many as 781,875 pieces of content were pulled out based on 62,829 counterfeit reports.