Every six months, Facebook releases a report that details when and how global governments make requests for data on the social media platform. And once again, this installment of the ‘Global Government Requests Report’ shows that countries are continuing to take advantage of this pathway to find information on its citizens.
For the first half of 2015, requests by government and law enforcement increased 18 percent,from 35,051 requests to 41,214.
Far and away the most prodigious generator of inquiries was the United States, which made 26,579 requests for user account data in that period. Facebook provided information on 17,577 of those accounts, resulting in a production of data for 79.85 percent of requested materials. The next closest in scale were India with 6,268 requests and the UK with 4,489 requests.
The report also tracks the number of content restrictions made by the local government which increased by 112% over the second half of 2014, from 9,707 to 20,568.
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These requests were largely enacted by India: within a six-month period, the country restricted 15,155 pieces of content on Facebook. The only country near that number of requests was Turkey, at 4,496. Notably, both France and Germany had content restrictions in the hundreds.
It’s likely that, for the foreseeable future, more countries will continue to request data about users and shield content in greater and greater numbers.
➤ Global Government Requests Report [Facebook]
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