India sent most takedown requests to social media cos: Research

BENGALURU: Technology companies Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, and open encyclopedia Wikimedia, have received the most content takedown requests from India, said UK-based technology research firm Comparitech.India is followed by Russia and Turkey in content removal requests, according to Comparitech, which collated data from the transparency reports of top internet companies till date. The governments of India and Russia each accounted for almost 20% of the overall number of removal requests. The total number of requests sent by various countries to internet firms stood at 3,90,764 so far.The report comes at a time when the Indian government, like many governments globally, is trying to make social media companies accountable for the content shared or posted on their platforms. This is part efforts to restrict the spread of misinformation, hate speech and child abuse material. Many internet and free speech activists, however, see the move as an excuse to control and suppress free speech.“Here at Comparitech, we’ve collated all of this data to find out which governments censor online content the most and which channels are targeted by each government. What did we find? Some governments avidly try to control online data, whether this is on social media, blogs, or both,” said Paul Bischoff, an editor at Comparitech.

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