India pips Pakistan in content restrictions requests: Facebook

NEW DELHI: India has been the top requestor for content restrictions, second only to the United States, with over 5,800 requests recorded in Facebook's government requests report in six months ending December 2014.

"Overall, we continue to see an increase in government requests for data and content restrictions. The amount of content restricted for violating local law increased by 11% over the previous half, to 9,707 pieces of content restricted, up from 8,774," said Monika Bickert, Facebook's Head of Global Policy Management, and Chris Sonderby, Deputy General Counsel, said in a statement.

The social networking site saw a rise in content restriction requests from countries like Turkey and Russia, while requests from countries like Pakistan came down.

The number of content restriction requests from Pakistan came down to 54 in the second half of 2014 from 1,773 in the first half. The number of content restriction requests from India rose to 5,832 from 4,960 in the first half.

While the number of government requests for user account data remained relatively flat in the six-month period, there was an increase in data requests from "governments such as India, and decline in requests from countries such as the United States and Germany", Facebook said.

With 112 million users until last year, India is the second largest market for US, second only to the United States.