The list includes South Korea, India, Indonesia, Russia, and Turkey in the top 5. Google said the majority of takedown requests were related to medical misinformation, defamation, harassment, and impersonation – all scoring new highs this time.
Google’s Content Removal Report
Every year, Google is approached by several governments with requests for taking down objectionable content, appearing in various sections of the internet. While most could be in Google’s search results, others could be in related or third-party services. And Google needs to act on them. As it does, it releases a public report on the number of requests it received and processed. And the latest report determining the actions in H1 2021 saw new highs in those numbers. As per it, the top 10 list includes countries like Russia, India, South Korea, Turkey, Pakistan, Brazil, the US, Australia, Vietnam, and Indonesia in the order. And the number of takedown requests these countries have shot to Google has increased too, as per its report. This list is topped by Indonesia, with one request specifying over 500,000 URLs to be removed! This is regarding the violation of local gambling laws, and Google is still processing it. The platform has already taken down 20,000+ URLs. Russia is the next country with maximum takedown requests, followed by Kazakhstan, Pakistan, South Korea, India, Vietnam, the US, Turkey, and Brazil. In the US, the nation’s 45% requests out of 404 in total were related to defamation in the search results, followed by trademark-related requests in YouTube. Next up is Australia, which made over 392 requests in total, with bullying and harassment as the top reason. Countries like India and South Korea have reported 1,332 and 991 requests respectively, with defamation and privacy/security as major reasons.
