‘India seeks removal of online content more than any other country’

New Delhi also tops individual list for requests made to Facebook – 91% of total appeals: report

The Indian government has made the highest number of requests to internet giants like Facebook and Google for content removal, more than any other country in the last decade, a report released by Comparitech, a UK-based tech research firm, said on Tuesday.

The website collated the data to find out which governments censor online content the most and which channels are targeted by each government. “Some governments avidly try to control online data, whether this is on social media, blogs, or both,” reads the report.

According to its findings, India made 77,620 requests for the removal of content from the five platforms studied — Facebook, Google, Twitter, Wikimedia and Microsoft — between July 2013 and December 2018.



To compile the report, Comparitech analysed data from transparency reports released by the five platforms.

Russia came second with 77,163 requests and Pakistan eighth with 9,771.

1. India – 77,620


2. Russia – 77,162


3. Turkey – 63,585


4. France – 49,971


5. Mexico – 25,036


6. Brazil – 17,346


7. Germany – 13,366


8. Pakistan – 9,771


9. United States – 9,574


10. United Kingdom – 6,402


11. Israel – 5,527


12. South Korea – 4,445


13. China – 4,374


14. Italy – 3,867


15. Austria – 2,928


16. Japan – 2,138


17. Vietnam – 1,964


18. Thailand – 1,901


19. Spain – 1,592


20. Argentina – 1,575

New Delhi also topped the individual list for requests made to Facebook, which, at 70,815, is 91 per cent of the total appeals forwarded by the country. India makes up 33.33 per cent of the overall requests submitted to Facebook, followed by France at 20.23 per cent.



The practice of recording the number of content removal requests was initiated by Google in 2009, and other social media giants followed suit.

“While India takes the top spot for the overall number of content removal requests, the majority of these come from Facebook. Therefore, while the Indian government is clearly censoring Facebook (and is actively censoring other platforms, too), other countries appear to be censoring in larger volumes across all platforms.”

PTA approaches Twitter over suspension of Pakistani accounts

These are Russia, Turkey, and France – those in second, third, and fourth place in our overall top 20.

Russia only seems to hold back on its Facebook and Wikimedia content removal requests, coming ninth and seventh overall respectively, as it tops the Google list, comes second on the Twitter list, and fourth on the Microsoft list, the report further added.