According to a Facebook report released on Friday, there has been a three-fold spike in the number of requests made by the government to Facebook for information and user accounts. On the contrary, the request to take down content from the social media platform has consistently decreased.
The report, which covers the period from 2013 to July 2018, revealed that there has been 68 per cent increase in the number of requests made for information and user accounts between January and June this year when compared to the same months in the previous year.
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The number of requests made for information in the first six months of 2018 is 16,580 while the number of the same was just eight in the first half of 2013. Similarly, the number of requests made for user accounts increased from 4,144 in the first six months of 2013 to 23,047 in the first half of 2018.
According to the report, India is second, after U.S., in the list of countries seeking most information requests and account information requests.
In terms of content takedown, the number of requests was 30,000 in 2015 and has now dropped to less than 3,500.