After requests from the governments of Russia and China, Google has removed content such as YouTube videos of anti-state protesters or content that criticises and alleges corruption among their politicians.
At the behest of Roskomnadzor, the tech company removed a YouTube video that allegedly exposed “corruption among politicians” and made “some rhetorical threats of violent action against the alleged corrupt politicians”, Google’s report said.
Google does not publish full data on takedown requests, but it does produce a selection of summaries about certain censorship requests it believes “may be of public interest”.
Google, whose parent company, Alphabet, made revenues of $350bn last year, also gives figures for the total items it has “named for removal”, but does not specify how many it has actually removed.
Worldwide requests to Google for content removals have more than doubled since 2020, according to cybersecurity company Surfshark.
