A report by SurfShark reveals the countries that asked Google to remove the most content off of their search engine results.
So, let’s take a look at which countries seem to be the hippest about keeping their people say, ahem, for their own protection. Of course, the actual reasons range from a number of different explanations, to governments looking to cover up state secrets, to saving their youth from harmful information by fully cleansing the internet of it, and avoiding copyright lawsuits. The infographic provided by SurfShark, a VPN service, is rather detailed, providing both countries, their total number of requests, as well as the different reasons as to why these requests were made. Factors weighing into content removal are fifteen-fold, showing just how thorough SurfShark is with the material that it’s been publishing.
To start us off, the country with the most number of content removal requests is Mother Russia itself. With a total of 123,606, at one point the country might just have considered removing Google Search from the country altogether. I joke, of course, but not all too much since the over 120,000 separate requests are not only massive in number, they also display a lot of diversity to themselves. The most common form of request removal in the country comes in the form of issues of national security, making up 33.66% of all requests made. This is closely followed by copyright at 25.74%; overall, there are nine separate causes of content removals by Russia, with violence being the content removal least sought after. So hey, maybe Russia doesn’t like someone impinging on state secrets, but a YouTube channel with dangerous pranks is fine?
Second on our top five list includes Turkey, with an even more diverse palate than that of Russia. However, it seems less significant, since the number of total requests jumps down from a massive 123,606 to 14,231. 14,000 requests might be less than the total number of queries that Turkey residents made in a day, or even half a day. Defamation is by far the biggest reason for content block requests in the country, at 38.95% of the total 14,231. It must be noted that problems thought to be significant by Turkey, such as nudity, defamation, and user privacy weren’t considered by Russia to be all that important.
India’s on the list at number three, and the number of total requests yet again takes a dive, but this isn’t all that significant. At 9,899, Russia’s total content block requests seem like a football stadium to what is India’s alleyway. Much like Turkey, India also considers defamation and privacy to be important causes for content removal, with the former being the most requested form of the subject matter in the country.
Number four is the USA itself, at a total of 9,627. Where India’s largest cause for content removal requests, defamation, consisted 27.85% of all requests, in the USA it is by far the number one reason for removal requests, at 60.17% of all requests. This is the only statistic to have taken up such a large space amongst its competing reasons amongst all different countries.
Finally, Brazil takes number five at 8,184 requests, with defamation yet again taking the cake for most common removal request reason. Privacy and security are number two on the list, with a larger bandwidth than any other country in the top five has displayed, at 24.18% of the list. South Korea, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Israel, Pakistan and China are also in the list of countries asking Google to remove the most content. Take a look at below infographic for more insights:
Read next: The EU Fined Tech Companies Over 1 Billion Euros in 2021
So, let’s take a look at which countries seem to be the hippest about keeping their people say, ahem, for their own protection. Of course, the actual reasons range from a number of different explanations, to governments looking to cover up state secrets, to saving their youth from harmful information by fully cleansing the internet of it, and avoiding copyright lawsuits. The infographic provided by SurfShark, a VPN service, is rather detailed, providing both countries, their total number of requests, as well as the different reasons as to why these requests were made. Factors weighing into content removal are fifteen-fold, showing just how thorough SurfShark is with the material that it’s been publishing.
To start us off, the country with the most number of content removal requests is Mother Russia itself. With a total of 123,606, at one point the country might just have considered removing Google Search from the country altogether. I joke, of course, but not all too much since the over 120,000 separate requests are not only massive in number, they also display a lot of diversity to themselves. The most common form of request removal in the country comes in the form of issues of national security, making up 33.66% of all requests made. This is closely followed by copyright at 25.74%; overall, there are nine separate causes of content removals by Russia, with violence being the content removal least sought after. So hey, maybe Russia doesn’t like someone impinging on state secrets, but a YouTube channel with dangerous pranks is fine?
Second on our top five list includes Turkey, with an even more diverse palate than that of Russia. However, it seems less significant, since the number of total requests jumps down from a massive 123,606 to 14,231. 14,000 requests might be less than the total number of queries that Turkey residents made in a day, or even half a day. Defamation is by far the biggest reason for content block requests in the country, at 38.95% of the total 14,231. It must be noted that problems thought to be significant by Turkey, such as nudity, defamation, and user privacy weren’t considered by Russia to be all that important.
India’s on the list at number three, and the number of total requests yet again takes a dive, but this isn’t all that significant. At 9,899, Russia’s total content block requests seem like a football stadium to what is India’s alleyway. Much like Turkey, India also considers defamation and privacy to be important causes for content removal, with the former being the most requested form of the subject matter in the country.
Number four is the USA itself, at a total of 9,627. Where India’s largest cause for content removal requests, defamation, consisted 27.85% of all requests, in the USA it is by far the number one reason for removal requests, at 60.17% of all requests. This is the only statistic to have taken up such a large space amongst its competing reasons amongst all different countries.
Finally, Brazil takes number five at 8,184 requests, with defamation yet again taking the cake for most common removal request reason. Privacy and security are number two on the list, with a larger bandwidth than any other country in the top five has displayed, at 24.18% of the list. South Korea, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Israel, Pakistan and China are also in the list of countries asking Google to remove the most content. Take a look at below infographic for more insights:
Read next: The EU Fined Tech Companies Over 1 Billion Euros in 2021