Meta Transparency Report: Government requests for user data increases in India, globally – Times of India

Meta has published its biannual as well as quarterly Transparency and Integrity Reports. While the biannual report says there has been an increase in government requests for user data, the quarterly report mentions steps taken by the social media company to curb bullying and harassment on both Facebook and Instagram.
Transparency Report, First Half 2022
“We’re publishing our biannual transparency report for the first half of 2022 to provide details on how we address government requests for user data, content violating local laws, global internet disruptions and intellectual property,” Meta said in its report. The Mark Zuckerberg-led company says that the report tells users about the ways it protects users’ privacy, security and access to information online.
Increase in government requests for user data: As per the Transparency Report, global government requests for user data increased 10.5% from 214,777 to 237,414 during the first six months of 2022. The US sought most users data from the company followed by India, Germany, Brazil, France and the UK. Meta also says that it scrutinises every government request to make sure it is legally valid, “no matter which government makes the request.”
“We comply with government requests for user information only where we have a good-faith belief that the law requires us to do so,” it notes.
The report says that India sent 55,497 requests to Meta, of which 51,602 are legal requests and 3,895 were emergency disclosure requests. Meta provided some data to 66.59% of these requests in the first half of 2022. Meta has seen an uptick in requests of user data in India. The total number of requests from India in the second half of 2021 was roughly at 50,400.
Rise in content restrictions globally: Meta says when content is reported as violating local law but it doesn’t go against the company’s Community Standards, it may limit access to that content in the country where the local violation is alleged. In the first half of 2022, the volume of content restrictions based on local law increased globally 75% as compared to the second half of 2021.
Increase in internet disruptions: The report also consists of the number of deliberate internet disruptions caused by governments around the world. In the first half of 2022, Meta identified 64 disruptions of Facebook services in 15 countries, compared to 38 disruptions in 12 countries in the second half of 2021.
In India, there were 18 disruptions in the first half of 2022. The total duration of these 18 disruptions were 1 month, 5 days, 13 hours and 58 minutes. The disruptions were caused in multiple areas in Jammu and Kashmir, Rajasthan, Punjab and Bihar, among others.

Integrity and Transparency Reports, Third Quarter 2022
Meta’s says in its quarterly integrity and transparency report that it saw a sharp decline in hate speech-related content – from 13.5 million to 10.6 million – in the third quarter of 2022. It attributes this change to improved accuracy of its AI technology. The Facebook parent company says that the AI can now better recognise “humorous terms of endearment used between friends, or better detect words that may be considered offensive or inappropriate in one context but not another.”
Facebook has improved the proactive detection rate – the percentage of all content or accounts acted on that Meta found and flagged – for hate speech from 95.6% to 90.2%, the report mentions. It also claims to have reduced the proactive rate of bullying and harassment-related content from 76.7% to 67.8% on Facebook and 87.4% to 84.3% on Instagram.
On Facebook in Q3, Meta took action on 16.7 million pieces of content related to terrorism – an increase from 13.5 million in Q2, 4.1 million pieces of drug content – an increase from 3.9 million in Q2 2022 and 1.4 billion pieces of spam content – an increase from 734 million in Q2.
On Instagram in Q3, we took action on 2.2 million pieces of content related to terrorism – an increase from 1.9 million in Q2 and 2.5 million pieces of drug content – an increase from 1.9 million in Q2.