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Whereas Prime Minister Narendra Modi pledged India’s dedication to freedom of speech at a world discussion board final week, it was a tumultuous time on social media platforms again residence. Twitter withheld tweets by journalist Rana Ayyub concerning the Gyanvapi mosque and blocked three standard accounts linked to protests towards the now-scrapped agriculture legal guidelines. A tweet by an unidentified person turned the premise for a police case towards fact-checker Mohammed Zubair. YouTube eliminated the late singer Sidhu Moose Wala’s track referring to the Sutlej-Yamuna Hyperlink canal, citing a authorities request.
Information launched by social media firms reveals that the variety of requests they get from the Indian authorities to take away content material or to share person data is rising yearly. A Plain Details piece in July 2021 had documented the Twitter numbers, whereas this piece examines the information for Google.
Requests from the Indian authorities to take away content material from varied Google merchandise practically doubled in 2021 and touched an all-time excessive, in keeping with the bi-annual Google transparency report. In absolute variety of requests, India was subsequent solely to Russia and South Korea. YouTube has been the prime goal through the years.
Requests to Fb and Twitter have additionally elevated, related stories launched by them present. Between 2019 and 2021, the variety of data requests to Fb practically doubled. On Twitter, the variety of removing requests grew 7.6 occasions in 2020, and additional doubled throughout the first half of 2021, as in comparison with the corresponding interval of 2020.
App motion
Most removing requests from the Indian authorities to Google are associated to content material on YouTube. Between 2011 and 2015, removing requests for YouTube shaped 33% of complete requests. Between 2016 and 2021, this elevated to about 60%. Absolutely the variety of content-removal requests on YouTube has elevated from 62 in 2011 to 1,670 in 2021.
For the final two years, the second-largest recipient class of removing requests has been Google’s Play Retailer. On this interval, one of many retaliatory actions taken by India towards Chinese language acts of aggression on the border has been the banning of Chinese language apps. To date, India has banned over 300 Chinese language apps in 4 tranches, starting July 2020. In absolute phrases, the variety of content-removal requests on Play Retailer multiplied from 132 in 2020 to 1,684 in 2021, although it’s not clear what number of of those pertained to those banned Chinese language apps and what number of associated to different apps.
High causes
Judging by the variety of the banned Chinese language apps and the explanations for removing, numerous requests directed on the Google app retailer seem to narrate to different apps. In 2021, about 89% of the federal government’s app removing requests to Play Retailer associated to ‘impersonation’. In keeping with Google insurance policies, impersonation refers to an app deceptive customers by showing much like another person’s product when it comes to app icons, descriptions, titles, or in-app parts.
Within the final 11 calendar years, 2021 was the one yr when ‘impersonation’ was the No. 1 cause for content material removing throughout all Google merchandise. In any other case, it had principally been ‘defamation’, which was cited as the explanation for 26% of all requests made to Google between 2011 and 2021. Roughly, three out of each 4 defamation requests have been associated to content material on YouTube. Different classes akin to obscenity/nudity, privateness and safety, and nationwide safety accounted for a small share.
Sticky India
In 2021, Google launched information pertaining to content-removal requests by governments for 99 nations. India was ranked third, after Russia and South Korea, with a 7% share. At 33,263, the entire requests made by the Russian authorities in 2021 amounted to about 9 occasions that put in by the Indian authorities.
Within the 11 years for which Google has launched these stories, 4 nations have featured within the prime 10 record every year. India is considered one of them, with the others being Brazil, Turkey and the US. There’s a good quantity of stickiness on the prime. That is coming from some large-population nations (India, US, Brazil and Russia) in addition to from developed nations with comparatively smaller populations (France, Germany and UK). Amongst India’s neighbours, Pakistan has 4 mentions, whereas Bangladesh entered the record for the primary time in 2021.
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