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Facebook has announced the release of a report that reveals the federal government (FG) requested user data of Nigerians on the social media platform five times in the first half of 2017.
The details of the latest ‘Government Requests Report’ was published by Facebook on Monday.
TheNewsGuru reports the FG carried out five legal process requests for five different Facebook users/accounts.
Facebook did not, however, revealed the details of the accounts governments requested their data.
“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,” the social media firm said in a statement.
The ninth Facebook transparency report showed that governments’ requests for information about users increased 21 percent worldwide compared to the second half of 2016, from 64,279 to 78,890.
Facebook also announced on Monday that it removed nearly 3 million posts, including videos, ads and other forms of content, from its services during the period under review, following complaints of counterfeiting and copyright and trademark infringement.
The worldwide data on intellectual property-related takedowns is a new disclosure for Facebook as part of its biannual “Transparency Report,” Chris Sonderby, a Deputy General Counsel at Facebook, said in a blog post.
Aggregate data shows Facebook received about 377,400 complaints from January through June, with many referencing multiple posts. About 60 percent of the reports related to suspected copyright violations on Facebook.
A “small fraction” of requests were excluded because they were not sent through an official form, Facebook said.
The company removed user uploads in response to 81 percent of filings for counterfeiting, 68 percent for copyrights and 47 percent for trademarks, according to its report. The percentages were roughly similar for Instagram.
“We believe that sharing information about (intellectual property) reports we receive from rights holders is an important step toward being more open and clear about how we protect the people and businesses that use our services,” Sonderby stated.