India 3rd among countries sending Google most content removal requests — 20,000 over last 10 years

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New Delhi: India has over the last decade sent nearly 20,000 requests, or 5.5 requests per day, to Google to remove content from across its platforms..

It ranks third among countries sending the most number of content removal requests to the tech giant, a new study by Surfshark has found...

More than 3.5 lakh content removal requests were sent to Google from 150 countries in the period examined, of which just six countries (Russia, South Korea, India, Turkey, Brazil and US) account for over 85 percent of the total requests, the Surfshark report noted...

A notable increase in content removal requests to Google by governments around the world during times of international conflicts and wars prompts us to consider the balance between genuine interest in a countrys public safety and the potential encroachment into censorship, Sablovskaja said...

From India, the top three justifications for content removal requests were defamation (20.1 percent), involving harm to reputation, including claims of libel, slander, and corporate defamation; followed by impersonation (16.3 percent), concerning the malicious usurpation of identity to harm the reputation of a victim; and lastly, privacy and security (8.3 percent) related to claims of violations of an individual users privacy or personal information, according to the Surfshark report...

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