Google India Took Down 3.93 Lakh Content Pieces In May Through Automated Detection Process

In line with other major intermediaries, Google India has also released its monthly compliance for the month of May. It received 25,694 complaints during the month via its local grievance redressal mechanism.

A majority of these grievances, more than 24,000, pertained to copyright infringement, followed by trademark infringement (433) and other legal issues (257). 

Based on the user complaints, the tech giant took removal actions against 62,673 content pieces that violated community guidelines. A bulk of these actions again were related to copyright infringement (61,349) and trademark infringement (1,273). 40 action removals were undertaken to comply with court orders, while 8 take down actions were taken based on other legal matters. 

Apart from this, Google also took down 3,93,303 pieces of content in India in the month of May as a result of its automated detection process. It took action against the content pieces for violating community guidelines and to prevent dissemination of harmful content related to child sexual abuse and violent extremist content.

Compared to April, the number of content removal actions via automated detection grew over 6% in May. In its last compliance report in April, Google India had reported that its systems took down 3,68,531 content pieces to prevent dissemination of harmful material.

Meanwhile, Twitter also released its monthly compliance report for the period between April 26, 2022 and May 25, 2022. The report noted that it received 1,589 complaints and took action against 1,621 URLs during the month.

In May, Meta-owned Facebook and Instagram together took down 21.6 Mn pieces of content for a slew of reasons ranging from spam to online nudity. Whatsapp also banned more than 1.9 Mn Indian accounts in the month of May, according to the latest compliance report filed by the messaging app.

In accordance with the new IT Rules, 2021, all social media platforms with more than 5 Mn users are mandated to publish monthly transparency reports.