India tops list of countries censoring Facebook posts.....

As more and more Indians join Facebook and post content on their timelines, Indian government is increasingly getting active in asking the social media site to censure posts. In the first six months of 2014, Facebook had "restricted access" to "4,960 pieces of content" in India.

The access was restricted after the content was "reported primarily by law enforcement officials and the India Computer Emergency Response Team under local laws prohibiting criticism of a religion or the state."

The information was revealed by Facebook in its third transparency report, which detailed the number of government requests Facebook received in the first half of 2014 for restricting access or for seeking information on users.

The only other two countries that stood out for restricting Facebook content were Pakistan and Turkey. In Pakistan 1,773 censorship requests were made while in Turkey the number was 1893.

In most of the 83 countries for which Facebook reported numbers, the website did not receive any government request to censure posts.

However, the US led when it came to seeking information on users. According to Facebook, US government officials made 15,433 requests, affecting 23,667 accounts.

The second place in this list was occupied by India, which made 4,559 requests affecting 5,958 accounts.

In India Facebook complied with around 51 per cent requests while in the US the figure was 80 per cent.

"We respond to valid requests relating to criminal cases. Each and every request we receive is checked for legal sufficiency and we reject or require greater specificity on requests that are overly broad or vague," Facebook noted in its report.

Chris Sonderby, Facebook Deputy General Counsel, said that the number of requests was gone up compared to the last six months of 2013.

"In the first six months of 2014, governments around the world made 34,946 requests for data - an increase of about 24 per cent since the last half of 2013. During the same time, the amount of content restricted because of local laws increased about 19 per cent," said Sonderby.