Need legal notice to take down offensive posts: Facebook revises policy in India

Removing a post off Facebook may now need a legal notice as the social networking giant has revised its policy in India after a recent Supreme Court order.

"We have changed our process. So now, before we restrict content in India for illegality, we require that the government submit legal process to us and we scrutinise that with our legal teams. We would not restrict the content if somebody in the community, somebody outside the government, flagged that content," Facebook's global policy head Monika Bickert told Economic Times by phone.

Deccan Chronicle reported that a post will be taken down on counts of illegality when a government or legal document is presented along with the appeal, only after the company scrutinizes it with its legal team.

A report by Facebook states that there were 14,971 requests for blocking content in the country between July and December 2015, and the revised policy which makes it harder, will curb a lot of irrelevant requests and help in better management and content filtering.

Clarifying the revised policy further, Monika said:

When people in India report content we will continue to look to see if it violates our community standards and if it does, we will remove it. It's only in these unusual circumstances where it doesn't violate our community standards but does violate the Indian law that we would require the government orders.