Indian Govt. Made 17,262 Requests For Facebook Data As Per Their Transparency Report!

Facebook has just released their latest transparency report, which has revealed several interesting facts and details. Especially about Indian Govt.

This transparency report from Facebook is significant, considering that Cambridge Analytica scandal has just rocked the social media giant, and all eyes are now set on them, determining how they will protect their users’ privacy.

Although transparency report doesn’t offer any solution, it does showcases what is wrong.

And also forces us to ask this question: Is Facebook really to be blamed?

Indian Govt. Wants More Facebook Data

As per the report, Indian Govt. made 17,262 requests to Facebook, seeking Facebook data of users. After the US, India is the country with the maximum number of such requests.

US Govt. requested Facebook 53,625 times for users’ data.

Overall, globally, there were 82,341 requests made to Facebook by various Governments and law enforcement agencies, seeking users’ data for various purposes.

This is an increase of 4%, compared to last year.

As per Chris Sonderby, VP & Deputy General Counsel, out of all these requests, 62% were those, which prohibited Facebook from notifying the users about their data scan.

Chris said,

“We always scrutinize each government request we receive for account data — whether from an authority in the US, Europe, or elsewhere — to make sure it is legally valid. If a request appears to be deficient or overly broad, we push back, and will fight in court, if necessary.”

Indian Govt. had earlier warned Mark Zuckerberg over data privacy issues.

Stunning Revelations From Transparency Report

For the first time, Facebook has added community guidelines enforcements in the transparency report. This data has been revealed for the period between October 2017 to March 2018.

6 prominent areas were such community guidelines were imposed were:

1. Graphic Violence
2. Adult Nudity and Sexual Activity
3. Terrorist Propaganda
4. Hate Speech
5. Spam
6. Fake Accounts

Here are some highlights:

• 3.4% of all monthly active users on Facebook have fake profiles
• In the 1st quarter of 2018, there were 583 million fake profiles, which was pretty consistent compared to last year.
• 98.5% of all fake profiles were detected by Facebook in the first three months of their creation. Facebook hasn’t revealed how they found such fake profiles.
• 20.9 million cases of reports against nudity and sexual violence were found by Facebook, which they flagged down. In 95.8% case, Facebook was able to flag it down before a user reported it.
• 1.86 million posts related to terrorism was pulled down by Facebook in the first quarter of 2018. Last year, in the same period, it was 1.08 million posts.
• 3.45 million posts related to graphic violence was pulled down, which is 0.22-0.25% of overall Facebook posts.

Do you think Facebook is doing a great work in ‘controlling the community’? Do let us know by commenting right here!