Interim govt to Google: More requests to remove critical contents

In the first six months of this year, the interim government submitted 279 requests to Google for content removal — and nearly 65 per cent of those were for content critical of the government. Google appears to have acted on very few of these requests.

The world’s leading technology company Google recently released its transparency report for January–June 2025. The report outlines what types of content governments asked Google to remove and what actions Google took in response. Here, “government requests” refer to requests received from various state agencies.

According to the report, during this period the government made 279 content removal requests to Google, covering 1,023 items (across Google’s various services).

In the same period last year, the first six months of 2024, the Awami League government made 337 such requests, covering 4,470 items. That government was ousted in August last year following the student–public uprising, after which the interim government was formed.

An analysis of the report shows that among this year’s requests, the largest share — 181 requests — were to remove content critical of the government. This was followed by 38 requests related to regulated goods and services, and 32 related to defamation.

All 181 requests about critical content concerned YouTube videos criticising the government. The highest number of requests came from the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC).

Google said that over 65 per cent of the requested items from Bangladesh lacked sufficient information. No action was taken on 16.1 per cent of the items.

Nine per cent had already been removed, 2.5 per cent were removed following legal processes, 3.7 per cent were removed based on policy violations, and in 3.5 per cent of cases, the content could not be found.

YouTube — a subsidiary of Google — also removes content that violates its Community Guidelines. According to YouTube’s own disclosure, from January to June 2025, a total of 621,655 videos were removed from Bangladesh.

After coming to power, the interim government repealed the Cyber Security Act and introduced the Cyber Security Ordinance. Under Section 8 of this ordinance, BTRC may request social media platforms to block specific content.

This provision also existed in the previous law. The current government has added a new requirement — for transparency, all blocked content must be publicly disclosed by the government.

Miraj Ahmed Chowdhury, managing director of Digitally Right, told Prothom Alo that since the new ordinance requires disclosure of such information, once the data is published, the public will be able to see exactly what kind of criticism the government is trying to remove.

However, the government has not yet publicly disclosed what specific content it requested Google to remove.