Russia responsible for more than half of all Google takedown requests

Russia, which has long desired to clean up its image online, submitted twice as many requests to remove content as the other top ten countries put together

Russia has placed nearly ten times as many takedown requests with Google than any other country in the world, according to analysis by Dutch VPN provider Surfshark.

Google receives thousands of requests from government agencies worldwide every year, to remove online content from products including Google Search, YouTube and Google Docs.

The company reviews these requests closely to determine if content should be removed because it violates a law or its own product policies.

Since 2009, Google has detailed the number of content removal requests it receives from governments around the world in its annual Transparency Report.

Surfshark, a VPN provider based in the Netherlands, recently analysed these files to find which nations have submitted the most removal requests, and what the most common reasons are for those requests.

Surfshark found that Russia had made the most takedown requests (123,606) over the past decade: nearly ten times as many as second-placed Turkey (14,231) and more than half the total requests worldwide (230,450).

Turkey, India, the USA, Brazil, South Korea, the UK, France, Germany and Italy were the other countries in the top 10, submitting a total of 61,890 requests.

Six of these 10 countries mentioned 'Defamation' as the most common reason for their requests. Defamation was the most-cited reason worldwide until about 2016, when national security began to grow as a concern. Regulation and copyright began to be mentioned in early 2018, coinciding with the launch of Europe's General Data Protection Regulation.

Over a third of Russia's takedown requests in the last decade claimed national security as the primary reason.

The country made over 31,000 removal requests in 2020 alone, with 18 per cent of them being for national security reasons.

Indian has made 9,989 takedown requests since 2011, followed by the USA with 9,627 requests.

While the US made just 596 removal requests in 2020, South Korea saw a big jump in its takedown in 2020 to 2,397, nearly doubling its ten-year total. They included claims of fake news on YouTube, as well as blogs that allegedly 'incite prostitution'.

It is worth noting that a single complaint might include numerous items that may or may not be related to the same or distinct pieces of content, and each unique URL in a request is treated as a separate 'item' for removal.

YouTube receives many more takedown requests than any other Google product, including Search: nearly half of all requests from 2011-2021 targeted the video platform. YouTube saw 112,621 complaints in this time, compared to 72,668 for Google Search.

In addition to taking action on reports from users and governments, Google says it invests extensively in fighting harmful content online and employs technology to detect and delete such content from its platforms.

'This includes using automated detection processes for some of our products to prevent the dissemination of harmful content such as child sexual abuse material and violent extremist content.

'We balance privacy and user protection to: quickly remove content that violates our Community Guidelines and content policies; restrict content (e.g. age-restrict content that may not be appropriate for all audiences); or leave the content live when it doesn't violate our guidelines or policies.'