[Infowarrior] - Facebook Transparency Report: Lots Of Government Surveillance, Bad Copyright Takedown Requests

[Richard Forno]

Facebook Transparency Report: Lots Of Government Surveillance, Bad Copyright Takedown Requests

Facebook, which was a bit late to the party, recently released its latest transparency report. In a break from earlier versions of the report, the social media giant has finally moved beyond only detailing requests for information by the government and its alphabet agencies and is now including intellectual property requests and statistics as well. There is a decent amount of information in both sections of the report, but on matters of both intellectual property requests and government information requests, an analysis of the numbers leads to some troubling conclusions.

Let's deal with the IP section first. The headline of much of the media reporting on this has been about the 377,000 or so requests Facebook got to take down content based on IP issues, with well over half of those specifically being about copyright. It's not a small number and some are using it to make the case that Facebook is Mos Eisley when it comes to copyright infringement: a hive of scum and villainy. Tragically for those arguments, the validity of those requests makes this all seem far less impactful.

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https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20171219/04001838839/facebook-transparency-report-lots-government-surveillance-bad-copyright-takedown-requests.shtml