India tops list of nations seeking Facebook content block

The Indian government tops the list of nations seeking removal of specific content from Facebook, the social networking site has said.

According to statistics released by Facebook, India placed 4,960 content removal requests followed by Turkey (1,893) and Pakistan (1773).

"We restricted access in India to a number of pieces of content reported primarily by law enforcement officials and the India Computer Emergency Response Team under local laws prohibiting criticism of a religion or the state," Facebook said in the report.

Overall, the amount of content restricted because of local laws increased about 19 percent.

Facebook also reported that requests by governments for user data jumped almost 25 percent (34,946 requests) in the first six months of 2014 compared to the last half of 2013.

Notably, India’s user data requests jumped 50 per cent.

India, with 5,958 requests, stood second only to United States which placed a whopping 23,667

requests. 

A vast majority of these requests relate to criminal cases, such as robberies or kidnappings. 

In many of these cases, governments request seek basic subscriber information, such as name and length of service. Other requests may also seek IP address logs or actual account content.

Facebook started publishing transparency reports since August 2013.

With around 1.35 billion users, it is no surprise that Facebook is fielding more requests than ever.