NEW DELHI: Social media companies complied with nearly three-fourths of the requests received from Indian law enforcement agencies over the past one-and-a-half years for blocking content and web pages deemed as unlawful under section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000.
Minister of state for home
Hansraj Gangaram Ahir, in a written reply to a question in the
Lok Sabha on Tuesday, disclosed that of the 2,245 requests conveyed to companies, including
Facebook, Twitter,
YouTube and
Instagram for blocking of objectionable URLs, 1,662 were complied with.
As per compliance data for 2017 and 2018 (till June) put out by Ahir, Facebook had the best record, having complied with nearly 89 per cent of the requests received for blocking of objectionable content/URLs. YouTube accepted 83.5 per cent of the recommendations. Instagram and Twitter, however, were less cooperative having blocked only 44 per cent and 56 per cent of the requested URLs respectively.
Ahir said while recommendations to block unlawful content were made periodically by law enforcement agencies, the Centre was also holding meetings with the intermediaries to strengthen the cooperation framework to ensure better compliance.
Representative image
