Facebook just made it harder for anyone to remove offensive content

In keeping with a recent Supreme court ruling, Facebook, the world's largest social network, has made it tougher for offensive content to be taken down and will do so only if it gets a legal or government notice.

"We have changed our process. So now, before we restrict content in India for illegality, we require that the government submit legal process to us and we scrutinise that with our legal teams," Facebook's global policy head Monika Bickert told ET over phone.

"We would not restrict the content if somebody in the community, somebody outside the government, flagged that content."

India had 14,971 content restriction requests in the July-December period, second only to France, and down from 15,155 requests in the first half of 2015, according to a Facebook report released on Thursday. The take-down calls were made by legal and government agencies as well as NGOs and Facebook members. The numbers in the next report will reflect Facebook's l reflect Facebook's decision to act only on legal or government requests.

India also made the second highest requests for user data at 5,561, after the US, which made 19,235 such demands. Facebook gives users the option to flag or report objectionable content including posts, photos, messages, comments, profiles, events and pages. Content is blocked or taken down if it violates Facebook's community standards. Bickert clarified that the new rules do not mean that people can no longer report offensive content. "When people in India report content we will continue to look to see if it violates our community standards and if it does, we will remove it. It's only in these unusual circumstances where it doesn't violate our community standards but does violate the Indian law that we would require the government orders," she said.

The Supreme Court last year read down Section 79 of the Information Technology Act, 2000, to say that a non-government request for taking down online content should be accompanied by a court order.

Image credit: Indiatimes