India accounted for the highest number of govt requests for Twitter account info in Jul-Dec 2020.
India was the largest source of government requests for account information received by Twitter, accounting for 25 percent of global volume, in the July-December 2020 period, the microblogging platform said on Wednesday.
India also ranked second in terms of volume of legal claims for content removal after Japan, Twitter said in a blog that provided an update to its transparency report.
Twitter submits a semi-annual report sharing details on the number of government and legal requests, takedown requests, and data on accounts processed for various violations and rule violations.
In its latest blog, Twitter said it produced some or all of the information requested in response to 30 percent of global information requests from governments in the July-December 2020 period.
“India is the largest source of government information requests, accounting for 25% of the world volume and 15% of specified world accounts. The second-largest volume of information requests originated in the United States, which comprises 22% of the world’s information requests ”, he added.
Twitter said the United States submitted the highest volume of global emergency requests (34 percent), followed by Japan (17 percent) and South Korea (16 percent).
During the reporting period (July-December 2020), Twitter received 38,524 lawsuits to remove content that specified 1,31,933 accounts. The platform withheld or removed some or all of the content reported in response to 29 percent of these global lawsuits.
“Although there was a 9 percent decrease in the number of legal claims that Twitter received, compared to the previous reporting period, these requests sought the removal of content from the largest number of accounts in a single reporting period,” added Twitter. .
About 94 percent of the total global volume of lawsuits originated in just five countries (in descending order): Japan, India, Russia, Turkey, and South Korea.
The US-based company said the accounts of 199 verified journalists and news outlets around the world were subject to 361 legal claims, a 26 percent increase in these requests from the previous reporting period.
It is pertinent to mention here that Twitter was criticized for its breach of TI rules in India, despite repeated reminders from the Government. Twitter, which has an estimated 1.75 million users in India, lost its legal shield as an intermediary in the country and became responsible for any illegal content posted by its users.
Twitter recently appointed a Resident Complaints Manager, days after appointing a Chief Compliance Officer, and also released its first India Transparency Report on Sunday to comply with new IT rules.
In its blog on Wednesday, Twitter said that impressions on offending tweets accounted for less than 0.1 percent of all impressions for all tweets globally from July-December 2020. The impressions metric captures the number of visits an individual received. offending tweet prior to removal.
During this time, Twitter removed 3.8 million tweets that violated its rules. Approximately 77 percent of these received fewer than 100 impressions before the deletion, 17 percent had received between 100 and 1,000 impressions, and 6 percent of the deleted tweets had more than 1,000 impressions.
She is a freelance blogger, writer, and speaker, and writes for various entertainment magazines.