India among top requesters of Facebook’s user data

The Government of India has submitted the second largest number of requests for user data from Facebook during the last six months of 2020. India is ranked only behind the USA.

India made a total of 40,300 requests, which is an increase by around 13% than the first six months of 2020. Out of these requests 52% of them were directed towards Facebook.

Globally, comparing with the first six months of 2020, government requests increased by 10% in the second half of 2020. Facebook stated in its half yearly transparency report that USA, India, Germany, France, Brazil and the U.K form the majority share of the user data requests made.

After receiving directions from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology for violation of 69A of the IT Act, 2000 Facebook had also restricted access to 878 items that includes content against public order and security of the state.

In global internet disruptions India topped the list with 48 instances of shutdowns of internet in the second half of 2020 in Jammu and Kashmir. The other countries in the list are Myanmar, Yemen, Syria and Tanzania. Internet disruptions can be defined as the restrictions on internet connectivity to limit people’s ability to access the internet.

Facebook also mentioned that restrictive actions have been taken on more than 25 million occurrences of contents laden with hate speech between the months of January to March, 2021. Due to the restrictive actions hate speech on the platform has decreased in comparison to the last three months of 2020. This could be achieved after Facebook allowed user to customise their newsfeed. Facebook also introduced Artificial Intelligence based tools to keep hate speeches under check.

About Facebook

Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in the year 2004 and its headquarters is located in California, USA. Mark Zuckerberg is also the CEO of Facebook.