Restricted access to 442 items in response to directions from MeitY: Meta
The restricted access was due to the violation of Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000
Meta, formerly Facebook, restricted access to 442 items in response to directions from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). The restricted access was due to violation of Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000, including content against the security of the state and public order.
“We also restricted access to 22 items in response to reports received from the Elections Commission of India. Additionally, we restricted access to 65 items in response to other valid court orders and to six items in response to private reports of defamation,” Meta said in a statement.
It received a total of 45,275 requests (legal/emergency) between January to June from the Indian government. The Indian government also requested Facebook to provide data of 68,485 users, with Meta agreeing to meet 51% of the requests.
In the July-December 2020 period, the total requests from the Indian government were 40,300. The social network had restricted access in India to 878 items in response to directions from MeitY.
Earlier, Meta had revealed that the social network has removed over 30 million pieces of content in September on Facebook and Instagram in India. This includes 26.9 million pieces of content across 10 policies for Facebook and over 3.2 million pieces of content across 9 policies for Instagram in compliance with the IT Rules 2021.
Globally, government requests for user data increased 10.5 per cent from 1,91,013 to 2,11,055 during the first six months of 2021. The US continues to submit the largest number of requests, followed by India, Germany, France, Brazil, and the UK.
