Data collected from the transparency reports of technology giants show that Pakistan sent 9,771 requests for content removal.
India tops the list of countries that sent the most content removal requests to some of the world's largest technology companies in the past 10 years, according to a report published by Comparitech on Tuesday.
Pakistan ranks eighth on the list, with Russia and Turkey also in the top three.
The report of the UK-based technology research firm is based on data collected from the transparency reports of tech giants such as Google, Facebook and Twitter. These transparency reports detail the amount of content removal requests that companies receive from courts and government agencies around the world.
Summarizing his findings after analyzing the data from 2009 to 2019, Comparitech said he found that "some governments try to control data online, whether on social networks, blogs or both."
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With 77,620 requests, India tops the list of the 20 countries that sent the most content removal requests to Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter and Wikimedia. Pakistan sent 9,771 such requests during the last decade.
Top 20 countries by total number of content removal requests
- India – 77,620
- Russia – 77,162
- Turkey – 63,585
- France – 49,971
- Mexico – 25,036
- Brazil – 17,346
- Germany – 13,366
- Pakistan – 9,771
- United States – 9,574
- United Kingdom – 6,402
- Israel – 5,527
- South Korea – 4,445
- China – 4,374
- Italy – 3,867
- Austria – 2,928
- Japan – 2,138
- Vietnam – 1,964
- Thailand – 1,901
- Spain – 1,592
- Argentina – 1,575
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Russia sent most content removal requests to Google
According to the report, Russia dominates the first place in the list of countries that sent the largest amount of content removal requests to Google between July 2009 and July 2018. With 61,471 requests, Russia's number is 53.31 percent of Total applications received from all countries (115,301).
Russia is followed by Turkey (10,379 applications) and the United States (7,964 applications). Pakistan ranks 20th with 292 requests to Google.
The main reasons for the removal of content, according to Comparitech, are national security (29.74pc of the total), defamation (17.83pc of the total) and regulated goods and services (12.72pc of the total).
India sent most content removal requests to Facebook
Among the countries that asked Facebook to remove content more frequently between July 2013 and December 2018, India tops the list by a wide margin.
With 70,815 requests, Facebook is where the vast majority of content removal requests from the Indian government go (91.23pc of the country's total 77,620).
However, the report noted that "while the Indian government is clearly censoring Facebook (and is also actively censoring other platforms), other countries appear to be censoring in large volumes through all platforms. "
France ranks second on this list with 42,989 applications, while Mexico ranks third with 24,872 applications. Pakistan, with 8,881 applications, is in sixth place.
Turkey sent most content removal requests to Twitter
According to the report, Turkey leads the ranking of countries that made the most requests to Twitter to remove content between January 2012 and July 2018.
These requests cover legal demands to remove content received by Twitter. They do not cover applications sent by government officials based solely on the Twitter Rules.
Turkey sent 30,183 content removal requests to the microblogging site during the mentioned period, while Russia sent 11,570 and France 3,807.
India ranks 4th on this list with 1,406 applications, while Pakistan ranks 11th with 592 applications.
Read: Pakistan reported 3,000 accounts in six months: Twitter
Citing an instance of a request received from Turkey between July and December 2018, Twitter said: "We received a court order requiring the removal of 24 allegedly defamatory Tweets related to a written book about the owner of a well-known construction company in Turkey" . After the review, users had already deleted 17 Tweets and 1 account did not exist. We opposed the court order for the rest of the content informed on the basis of their journalistic interest, and we prevailed. Therefore, we don't take any more measures. "
Microsoft and Wikimedia
With 3,732, China tops the list of countries that sent the most content removal requests to Microsoft from January 2015 to December 2018. France and the United Kingdom follow.
The requests are mainly from governments for claims such as violations of Microsoft's terms of use or local laws in the country.
Except for some of Microsoft's services, China has banned all websites analyzed in the report.
The United States leads the group of countries classified by the number of applications sent to Wikimedia from July 2012 to December 2018. It is followed by Germany and France
Comparitech noted that Wikimedia content removal requests "almost never take action." According to the report, the only request for removal of accepted content was from Ukraine in 2014.
Reuters / File header image.
Source: https://www.dawn.com/news/1508395/india-tops-list-of-countries-which-sought-removal-of-online-content-pakistan-at-8th-spot-report