Article Summary
- Twitter says governments of 85 countries made 16,000 requests for user data on the platform in the first half of 2022.
- The top 5 countries seeking information about their citizens include India, the United States, France, Japan, and Germany.
- Twitter said it also received approximately 53,000 legal requests to remove content from governments during the reporting period.
Popular microblogging site, Twitter, has stated that it received a total of 16,000 requests from governments of 85 countries asking for user data in the half year 2022. Twitter disclosed this in its latest Transparency Report for January 1 to June 2022.
While noting that the disclosure rates vary by requester country, it stated that the top five requesting countries seeking account information in H1 2022 are India, the United States, France, Japan, and Germany.
Asides the request for data, Twitter says it also received multiple legal requests for content removal from governments within the period.
- “Around the world, Twitter received approximately 53,000 legal requests to remove content from governments during the reporting period. Twitter’s compliance rate for these requests varied by requester country. The top requesting countries were Japan, South Korea, Turkey, and India.
- “Twitter received over 16,000 government information requests for user data from over 85 countries during the reporting period. Disclosure rates vary by requester country. The top five requesting countries seeking account information in H1 2022 were India, the United States, France, Japan, and Germany,” it said.
Actions taken on content
While noting that it continues to take action on content that violates its rules and protects users’ rights in response to government legal requests, Twitter said:
- “Over the reporting period, Twitter required users to remove 6,586,109 pieces of content that violated Twitter Rules, an increase of 29% from H2 2021. We took enforcement action on 5,096,272 accounts during this period (a 20% increase), and 1,618,855 accounts were suspended for violating the Twitter Rules (a 28% increase).”
It further added that it would share more about its path forward for transparency reporting later this year.
Governments all over the world are now concerned about social media and its impacts and are doing everything to bring it under control. The requests for user data by 85 governments further confirmed how social media is being monitored.
Furtherance to that, the European Union on Tuesday released a list of 19 companies that will be placed under stricter regulatory control, through its Digital Service Act (DSA). The companies including Facebook, Twitter, and 17 others are classified as very large online platforms (VLOPs) or very large online search engines (VLOSEs) and will now be placed under closer monitoring by EU regulators.
Other companies in the list include Alibaba’s AliExpress, Amazon Marketplace, Apple AppStore, Booking.com, Google Play, Google Maps, Google Shopping, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat, TikTok, Wikipedia, YouTube, Zalando, Bing, and Google Search.
