I’m glad Google and other big platforms provide transparency into government requests for information take-downs. One big reason: it shows you which governments really want to mold reality to their preferred shape.
From my recent story at Forbes:
According to a new report by VPN maker Surfshark, Russia accounts for 61% of global content removal requests over the past decade all by itself, and the pace is increasing. Worldwide removal demands surged 50% last year to over 90,000, and Russia accounted for fully 58,000 of those requests.
150 countries have submitted content removal requests over the past decade, according to Google’s own bi-annual reporting. But 104 of them have submitted fewer than 100 requests, while six countries have submitted more than 10,000 requests each, together accounting for the lion’s share of removal requests …