India was the fifth largest ‘requestor’ among countries for removing content on Twitter and Periscope based on local laws, according to microblogging platform Twitter’s latest transparency report.
The report captures data between July -December 2019 on matters such as Twitter’s rules enforcement statistics, legal demands on content removal made by countries to the platform, copyright takedown notices, and account information requests received from government, law enforcement agencies and third parties by Twitter.
Twitter said it witnessed a 47% jump in global legal demands for content removal during the period under review compared to the last reporting period (January-June 2019).
The platform said it removed 2.9 million pieces of content and suspended around 8.72 lakh accounts during the period under review. “There was a 54% increase in the number of accounts actioned for violations of our hateful conduct policy during the reporting period,” Twitter said in the report. There was a 95% increase in the number of accounts actioned for violations of Twitter’s abuse policy according to the report.
“In 2020, it is more important than ever that we shine a light on our own practices, including how we enforce the Twitter rules, our ongoing work to disrupt global state-backed information operations, and the increased attempts by governments to request information about account holders,” Twitter said in a seperate blog post on the report.
Top legal demands to remove content from Twitter and Periscope and other requests to remove content based on local laws originated from countries like Japan (45%), Russia (22%), Turkey (19%), and South Korea (5%) followed by India (3%).
In terms of legal demands to produce account information received from governments, law enforcement agencies and third parties, India ranked fourth (9%), after US (26%), Japan (22%) and France (12%). China and Monaco appeared in the report for the first time for account information requests.
Twitter said it saw a 21% increase in global account information requests. It received 789 account information requests from India.
The company received a total of 782 legal content removal requests from India during the period under review. Worldwide, Twitter received around 27,538 legal content removal requests and its compliance rate was 34.7%.
Twitter said it saw a 50% increase in content removed compared to the last reporting period and a 27% increase in accounts suspended. Twitter said it saw a 47% increase in accounts actioned compared to the last reporting period.
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