The government made 55,497 requests to various Meta platforms asking for user data in the first six months of 2022, according to the company's bi-annual report. Also, several companies have published their monthly transparency reports in line with the provisions of the Information Technology Rules, 2021. In this article, we'll give you a summary of the reports of some of the companies. What do the IT rules say about transparency reports? "Significant social media intermediaries shall "publish periodic compliance report every month mentioning the details of complaints received and action taken thereon, and the number of specific communication links or parts of information that the intermediary has removed or disabled access to in pursuance of any proactive monitoring conducted by using automated tools or any other relevant information as may be specified." - IT Rules, 2021 Meta's Bi-annual transparency report Period: January 2022 to June 2022. Access the report here. The Indian government submitted the second-highest number of government requests for user data followed by Germany, Brazil, France and the UK. The United States government submitted the highest number of such requests. This report includes information about requests related to Meta's various products and services including Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Oculus and WhatsApp. Total government data requests made by the Indian government asking Meta platforms for user data—55,497. What is a government data request? Facebook may share data like name, IP address logs, account content when government officials make requests for such data for "official investigations". Government data requests are further…
