Every year, Google receives thousands of requests from the governments around the globe for the removal of some sensitive content hosted on Google’s platforms, such as Blog Post, YouTube, etc.
According to the UK internet-research site, Comparitech’s report 115,301 requests have been made to remove content between July 2009 and Jully 2018. The most common reasons for those requests are national security, defamation, privacy and security, and copyright.
Here are the 7 countries with most requests and reasons:
Russia – 61,471 – National Security
Russia is definitely one of the countries that take internet security seriously. Russia is planning to test the unplugging from the global internet as a part of its new “sovereign internet” law. Some experts are claiming that President Putin is trying to establish a closed internet similar to China’s.
Turkey – 10,379 – Defamation
Blocking online content and websites is not something new for Turkey. Turkey has banned YouTube, Twitter in the past and Wikipedia is still banned as a result of a Turkish court order.
USA – 7,961 – Defamation
The USA is also one of the most active countries when it comes to taking action against online content. The most common reason for requesting the removal of content is defamation against the USA.
Brazil – 6,455 – Defamation
Similar to most of the countries on the list, Brazil is also requesting Google to remove content, especially politically-related videos frequently. Back in 2012, the election court ordered to arrest of the most senior executive in the country.
India – 5,308 – Defamation
India has adopted a law in 2011 that requires internet companies to remove any content that is deemed “defamatory,” “hateful”, “harmful to minors”, or “infringes copyright” within 36 hours of being notified by the authorities. As a result, Google executives are summoned by the Indian court many times about the subject.
Britain – 3,984 – National Security
Most of the content that is removed as a result of Britain’s request was a part of surveillance and police measures system to combat terrorism. The UK is also taking action against the websites which promote hate speech.
Germany – 3,197 – Defamation
Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz law or NetzDG was passed in 2017 to fight against and to censor hate speech. Germany asked Google to remove content that denies the holocaust, which is a felony under German law.
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