BENGALURU: Social Media giant Facebook on Thursday said the Modi government sought details of 62,754 users/accounts from the firm during the second half of 2020 (July-December). In total, 40,300 requests were made by the Indian government during that period, Facebook said in its transparency report which was released today.
Out of 40,300 requests, 37,865 were the legal process requests which pertain to disclosure of account records solely in accordance with the company’s terms of service and applicable law.
According to the company rules, legal process requests are sent by the law enforcement agent or emergency responder who is authorized to gather evidence in connection with an official investigation or in order to investigate an emergency involving the danger of serious physical injury or death.
As per Facebook’s Transparency report, the Indian government made 2,435 emergency disclosure requests during July-December, 2020. The tech firm, said that it shared data including account records for 52% of all the requests made. The data sharing requests by Indian government since 2018 have more than doubled with a majority pertaining to legal process and some emergency disclosures.
Notably, the amount of content restricted by Facebook has reduced significantly from 2018 onwards from 17,700 items in July-December 2018 to 878 in July-December, 2020. “We restricted access in India to 878 items in response to directions from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology for violating Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000, including content against security of the state and public order. Of these, 10 were restricted temporarily. We also restricted access to 54 items in compliance with court order,” Facebook said in the report.
The Indian government made requests to restrict 104 pages and groups, 322 posts and 100 profiles during the second half of 2020. Last year, the Indian government introduced a set of regulations for social media companies, OTT platforms and digital news portals called the Information Technology (Guidelines for Intermediaries and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 (Rules). The Social media platforms with more than 50 lakh registered user base have been directed to appoint intermediaries for content regulation amidst rise of fake news, hate speech and other harmful content in addition to introducing significant mechanism for user account verifications.