In statistics disclosed by Twitter, governments throughout the world requested that content be removed from a record number of user accounts between January and June of last year.
According to statistics in the platform’s latest transparency report reviewed by Reuters, governments filed 43,387 legal claims for the removal of content from 196,878 accounts in the six months.
According to Twitter, this was the most accounts ever targeted with government removal requests in a reporting period since the company began publishing transparency reports in 2012.
It was also the most government removal request in a single reporting period.
According to the report, ninety-five percent of these legal demands came from five nations, with Japan receiving the most, followed by Russia, Turkey, India, and South Korea.
Several nations, notably China and North Korea, have restricted access to the website.
In response to 54 percent of worldwide legal demands during this period, Twitter claimed it either “withheld” access to content in specific areas or compelled account holders to remove part or all of the reported information.
“We’re facing unprecedented problems as governments throughout the globe increasingly seek to interfere and delete information,” said Sinead McSweeney, Twitter’s vice president of global public policy and charity.
Along with companies like Facebook and Google, Twitter has also faced criticism in the United States and other countries over how it combats issues like misinformation and violent rhetoric on its platform.
According to the data, the number of accounts specified in the legal requests was up almost 50 percent from 131,933 accounts from the previous six months.
The number of government removal requests increased 14 percent from 38,524 in the last reporting period and was up about 2.8 percent year-over-year, Twitter said.
This summer, the firm claimed that it had witnessed an increase in government requests to remove information posted by journalists and news outlets in 2020 but that the number of such accounts subject to these requests had declined 14 percent in the most recent reporting period.
According to the report, government demands for Twitter to maintain account information were decreased by around 4% from the previous reporting period.
According to the report, the United States accounted for around 57 percent of all requests, and it was also the single greatest source of government information requests.
Twitter receives a record amount of gov requests to delete content
