How touchy is Pepsico about Kurkure? 16,600 of the 17,713 pieces of content that Facebook removed in India between July and December 2018, in response to legal requests by India’s law enforcement agencies, courts, and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), were related to Pepsico, according to Facebook's latest Transparency Report. At 17,713, the number of takedowns were a steep rise from the previous six-month period, when only 1,500 pieces of content were restricted. “We restricted a further 29 items in response to other court orders related to defamation,” Facebook said. The vast majority of the content restricted was on Facebook - only 28 pieces of content on Instagram were restricted. The content restricted on Facebook in India included 17,482 posts, 200 pages and groups, 2 comments and 1 profile. Globally, Facebook restricted access to 36,000 pieces of content in July-Dec 2018, so the PepsiCo case accounted for 46% of content that the company restricted worldwide over the period, and 93.71% of content restricted in India. Pieces of content taken down because of Pepsico: 166,000 % of India takedowns: 93.1% % of global takedowns: 46% Increase in India takedowns, QoQ: 11.8 times at 17713, as compared to 1500. MediaNama had reported last July that PepsiCo had obtained an interim order from the Delhi High Court to delete hundreds of posts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. These posts, PepsiCo said in its petition, furthered the myth that its Kurkure corn puffs contained plastic. The civil defamation suit compiled…
