Content restrictions by Facebook in India dipped just a little (184 content pieces) to 14,971 in the second half of 2015, compared to 15,155 content pieces in the first half of 2015. In its transparency report for July-December 2015 (global), Facebook said that in India (report), it restricted access to content in response to legal requests from government and law enforcement agencies. It also blocked content identified as illegal and reported by NGOs and Facebook users. Facebook states that the majority of the 14,971 content pieces that it blocked pertained to anti-religious and hate speech ‘that could cause unrest and disharmony within India’. It added that it ceased to act on legal requests to remove content access unless told to do so by a binding court order and/or a notification by an authorised agency. It decided to do this after the company was informed of the “proper interpretation of the Information Technology Act 2000” by the Supreme Court. It is unclear what this notification from the Supreme Court is. From July-December 2015 in India, the company received 5,561 requests in all, whereas the accounts/users requests were 7,018. Facebook provided some data in 50.87% of these requests. Global data requests: - Content pieces: Globally, France led the total number of content pieces blocked with 37,695, followed by India at 14,971 and Turkey at 2,078. For violating local law, the total number of content pieces restricted shot up by 171.4% to 55,827 from 20,568 in H1 2015. - User data: The US led…
