There has been an immense increase of even more then 48,000 per cent in legal demands which is being made by India from variety of courts and the government. This legal demand is made in order to get rid of content from Twitter between 2014 and 2020, as per the repots of Twitter’s global transparency reports. According to the data which was shared with the Parliament, it showcased and highlighted the growing trend of online censorship in India that the number of content block orders issued to social media companies by the government has been increased by 2,000 per cent, that too even within the same time period.

HIGHLIGHTS
A rise in legal demands in more than 48,000 percent 
Government ordered to take down 9849 links from social media platforms
India requests to remove 12,373 pieces of content

As per the data shared within the Lok Sabha by former Minister of State for Electronics and IT Sanjay Dhotre, the government had ordered social media companies to get rid of 9,849 links from their platforms under the Section 69(A) of the Information Technology Act. Well, information in 2000, in 2020, was compared to 471 such requests were created in 2014, which gave a rise of 1,991 pee cent. 

Twitter’s global transparency reports states that during the same period, India has made certain legal requests to get rid of 12,373 items of content from the microblogging platform, from which 9,000 requests were already made in 2020 alone. India is at the fourth place in issuing blocking of orders between 2014 and 2020, after Japan, which has made quite 55,000 such requests. On the other hand, Turkey, that made nearly 50,000 applications; and Russia, that has ordered the removal of around 36,000 tweet.

Within the initial six months of 2021, many Indian courts and the government has asked Twitter to block over 4,900 tweets; which generally coincide with the blocking of more than 250 accounts by the company in reference to the exchange of “provocative” information. The government even asked the company to remove certain tweets which were critical during the handling of Covid-19 and the peasant protests was going on at that time. 

Well, it is definitely worth noting that Twitter in its international transparency reports doesn't offer to show a breakdown of legal block orders issued by various courts and the government. However, Twitter’s petition against the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) the blocking orders have discovered that between February month 2021 and February month 2022, the company was ordered by the government to block around 1,400 accounts and 175 tweets. The government has therefore ordered Google to get rid of 9,000 items of content from services like Search, YouTube, Gmail and Blogger, for these particular reasons like criticism of the government, defamation, adult content and phishing, among other things, shows an absolute analysis of the worldwide transparency reports of the company within 2014 to 2020. Google has provided a breakdown of the number of takedown notices that it has received from the government and also the number of notices from the courts.

According to it's transparency reports, no more than 2,100 links were blocked on the platform during the years of 2019 and 2020. In these two years, the company has removed content following government orders which includes content against state security and public order.

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