Hong Kong urges Google to remove 183 items on its sites, only 43.7% requests fulfilled

The Hong Kong government has urged Google to remove 183 items on its sites in the second half of last year, including three Google Drive folder URLs of the “Guardians of the sheep village”, a series of children’s comic books that was said to resonate with the 2019 unrest in Hong Kong.

According to the latest Google Transparency Report, the Hong Kong authorities have made 56 requests for Google to remove 183 items during the period of July to December 2022. 55 items were related to "national security", 52 items were related to "privacy and security", while the rest were under categories such as " identity theft", "fraud" and "regulated goods and services". 

Among the 183 items, 130 were featured on YouTube, while 32 on Google Ads and five on Google Play. However, only 43.7% of the requests were fulfilled,  including the removal of advertising financial scams featuring Hong Kong officials.

Meanwhile, nearly 50% (48.1%) of the requests were not fulfilled, including three Google Drive folder URLs of the “Guardians of the sheep village”.

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During the same period, Google failed to respond to the request of the Hong Kong government to take action on 88 items, accounting for 48.1% of the total. Google disclosed that it had received police requests to remove books related to “Guardians of the sheep village” comics, including three Google drives and one relevant site. The police stated that the relevant materials were judged by the district court as seditious publications.

Google pointed out that no action was taken against these Google drives, as relevant content has not been found since January this year.  Meanwhile, a search by MARKETING-INTERACTIVE saw on Google that the comic series is still available to read.

Google stressed that there are many reasons for not removing content as requested, according to the report. For example, some requests may not be specific enough to determine what content the government agency required Google to remove such as URLs not listed in the request, or the content may have been removed by the author.

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