The Facebook page of the controversial 'Kiss of Love' protest was blocked along with the profile pages of all 15 administrators and a related Facebook group Free Thinkers' earlier this week, reports The Hindu. One of the administrators told the publication that some of the profiles were reinstated after an identification process while others failed it. The Facebook page also seems to have been reinstated yesterday evening. What’s striking here is Facebook hasn’t provided any information as to why this Facebook page was initially blocked and later reinstated. It’s possible that Facebook reinstated this page following public outcry which raises another question as to what about the Facebook pages that were blocked where there was no public outcry. Earlier in the day, Facebook informed in its transparency report that it restricted access to 4,960 pieces of content in India during the first six months of 2014 (January- June 2014), the highest among all the countries in the world, and a significant increase from 4,765 pieces of content during July-Dec 2013. What’s noteworthy here is the significant difference in the number of restricted content pieces in India and other countries. Turkey is distant second with 1,893 pieces of content restricted followed by Pakistan with 1,773 restricted content pieces. Facebook informs that most of these restrictions were due to local laws “prohibiting the criticism of a religion or the state”, reported by law enforcement officials and the India Computer Emergency Response Team. The social networking giant however hash’t disclosed any information on which government agencies sent these requests, how…
