Google received a total of 31,497 complaints from individual users in India via designated mechanisms from December 1 to December 31 last year, according to a transparency report published by the company. The company received 26,087 complaints from users in November 2021 which confirms an uptick in the number of complaints; the figure stood at 24, 579 in October suggesting that the complaints have been on the rise for over three months now. These complaints are related to third-party content that is believed to violate local laws or personal rights on Google's significant social media intermediary (SSMI) platforms, the company added. The report revealed that a majority of the complaints (30,359) were related to copyright issues, which has been the trend over the past few months as well. The report does not include requests made by the government. [caption id="attachment_155261" align="aligncenter" width="260"] Source: Google[/caption] The break-up of complaints consists of the following categories: Other legal issues with 578 complaints (1.8 percent) Trademark with 258 complaints (0.8 percent) Defamation with 174 complaints (0.6 percent) Counterfeit with 81 complaints (0.3 percent) Court Order with 21 complaints (0.1 percent) Graphic Sexual Content with 11 complaints (0.0 percent) Circumvention with 11 complaints (0.0 percent) Impersonation at 4 complaints (0.0 percent) The Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, mandate that significant social media intermediaries have to publish periodic compliance reports detailing complaints received from users in India and the actions taken by the platform to address these issues. It sheds…
