Twitter's Transparency Report Reveals Number Of Takedown Request

Twitter's transparency report has shown that the platform received the highest number of content removal demands from governments around the world from January to June 2021.

Twitter said it received 43,387 legal demands that involve 196,878 accounts and those numbers represent the largest increase in content removal requests and accounts reported within a six-month reporting period from the time it started publishing transparency reports in 2012.

The legal demands submitted by Indonesia's Ministry of Communication and Information Technology is another factor that contributed to the spike in an account reported. 

The agency flagged 102,363 accounts for posting sexual services and illegal adult content, and Twitter took action on 18,570 of them. Twitter also saw an increase in accounts withheld from the public due to content that allegedly violated Russia's laws against inciting suicide.

Last year, the Nigerian government blocked Twitter for its refusal to bring down a tweet it claimed to threaten the unity of the country and reopened it after 222 days.

Also, Russian News Agency Tass reported that the country's internet authorities threatened to block Twitter if it doesn't remove "suicide incitement aimed at minors, child pornography, as well as information about the use of drugs" on its website. The authorities also slowed down Twitter's loading speeds for desktop and mobile.

A total of 95 percent of the total global volume of legal demands came from five countries in particular, with Japan remaining as the top requester. Japan is responsible for 43 percent of the legal demands Twitter received, with most of them being about narcotics and drug-related posts, obscenity and financial-related crimes. The other four countries are Russia, Turkey, India and South Korea, in that order.