Governments told Google to remove 50% more content in 2022 – with Turkey and the US stand-outs

Between 2013 and 2022, Turkey’s government agencies have requested Google to remove content over 18.9k times, positioning Turkey in 4th place globally, according to privacy protection company Surfshark. The most frequently cited reason in these requests is Defamation. The US comes in sixth, with around 11k requests.

Globally, governmental requests for content removal exceeded 355k over the last decade, and 2022 stands out as a record-breaking year, witnessing a 50% surge in removal requests.

Turkey’s government requested removal of 90.4k items in a decade

Over the past decade, the Turkish government made 18.9k requests for content removal from Google, averaging five requests per day. Turkey’s top three justifications were defamation (40.1%), involving harm to reputation, including claims of libel, slander, and corporate defamation. This was followed by privacy and security (18.2%), related to claims of violations of an individual user’s privacy or personal information, and obscenity/nudity (13.7%), concerning content that is not pornographic but may violate laws surrounding nudity.

Each request often includes multiple items, significantly elevating the content item count. In total, 18.9k requests from Turkey in the last decade comprised 90.4k items for removal, averaging five items per request. Since 2019, the top three biggest requesters for content removal from Google in Turkey have been a court order directed at Google, a court order directed at a 3rd party, and information and communications authority.

Compared to Greece, Turkey requested 82 times more content to be removed from Google over the last decade. Most of the content country requested to remove was from YouTube (7.7k), Web Search (3.9k), and Blogger (3.7k).

However, government requests are on the rise. Compared to 2021, in 2022, there are 22% more requests submitted to Google by the Turkish government. 2022 accounts for 14% of all requests over the last decade, marking it a record year.

Top countries by Google content removal requests

Drawing from Google’s bi-annual content removal reports spanning 2009 to 2023, Surfshark’s study scrutinises a decade’s worth of data on removal requests, encompassing total counts, year-over-year trends, reasons, products, and requester types across 150 countries. The analysis, based on data collected as of 16 October 2023, prioritises request counts over individual items, as each request may encompass multiple items with a single selected product and reason.

In the last decade, six countries have accounted for over 85% of the total content removal requests:

• Russia is responsible for 215k requests, averaging 59 requests each day over the last 10 years. 
• South Korea follows with 27k requests in total, averaging seven requests daily.
• India has submitted 20k requests at a rate of 5.5 per day. 
• Turkey has submitted a total of 19k requests, averaging five requests per day.
• Brazil is responsible for 12k requests, averaging three requests per day. 
• The US follows with 11k content removal requests, averaging three requests per day.
• Two-thirds of the analysed countries have submitted fewer than 100 requests in the past decade, emphasising the rarity of requests in most nations.

Governments have requested content removal from 50 different Google products — from Images and YouTube to Maps. The top products with the most requests are YouTube (175k), Google Search (104k), and Blogger (17k). 

Surfshark: governments’ ‘encroaching into censorship’?

There are 22 justifications that allow governments to request the removal of content from Google products. The top 5 justifications frequently used by governments over the last decade were:

1. National security – quoted in over 27% of all the requests made over the last decade. 
2. Copyright – mentioned in almost 20% of all the requests over the last decade. 
3. Defamation – quoted in slightly more than 10% of all the requests.
4. The fourth and fifth most quoted reasons are Regulated Goods and Services and Privacy and Security. Both account for 10% each.

Over the past decade, Google received an average of approximately 97 content removal requests per day from governments worldwide.

Agneska Sablovskaja, lead researcher at Surfshark, said:

Government requests for content removal from Google products are on the rise. In the past decade, the global count has surged nearly 13 times — from 7k to 91k requests annually. National security stands out as the most frequently cited reason by governments globally seeking the removal of undesirable content. A notable increase in content removal requests to Google by governments around the world during times of international conflicts and wars prompts us to consider the balance between genuine interest in a country’s public safety and the potential encroachment into censorship.

Featured image via Google – YouTube and Surfshark