Govt requests for user info from social media giants on the rise

Keeping up with the increased usage of social media in the country, the government of Bangladesh has also increased its content removal and user information requests to global companies including Facebook, Google, and TikTok.

Recently, the government asked Facebook for information on 1,171 users this year, according to the Transparency Report published by Facebook-parent Meta for the first half (January to June) of 2022.

The government sent 659 requests for the data to Facebook over the 6-month period. In response, Facebook answered the government's request for data on 66.01% of the accounts.

Previously, the government sent 525 requests for July to December of 2021. Facebook responded by giving the authorities 66.86% of the information.

On the other hand, the government made 707 requests to tech giant Google to remove videos from YouTube, including 445 video removal requests for Defamation and 175 video removal requests for Government criticism, according to the Transparency Report published by Google for Q3 2022 (July-September 2022).

Previously, the government sent 599 requests for the time period between July to December of 2021.

Coming to TikTok, the government of Bangladesh made 86 requests to the short video-sharing platform for the removal of 1,923 video content and 80 accounts.

TikTok responded by removing 659 videos and 6 accounts from its platform.

Previously, the government sent 5 requests for the removal of 16 accounts from TikTok, out of which 6 accounts were removed due to community guidelines violations.