Twitter on Wednesday announced that government demands to remove content posted by journalists and news outlets jumped 26% worldwide in the second half of 2020 vs. the first half of the year, Reuters reports.
According to the company’s transparency report, 199 ‘verified’ journalists and news outlets on its platform were subject to 361 legal demands to remove content – though the social media giant refused to say which countries had submitted them.
Meanwhile, Twitter received over 14,500 requests for information between July 1 and Dec. 31, of which 30% of the requests were honored. India is “the single largest source of all information requests from governments during the second half of 2020, overtaking the United States, which was second in the volume of requests,” according to the report.
Such information requests can include governments or other entities asking for the identities of people tweeting under pseudonyms.
Twitter also received more than 38,500 legal demands to take down various content, which was down 9% from the first half of 2020, and said it complied with 29% of the demands. –Reuters
After engaging in several conflicts with countries – primarily India – over rules regulating social media content, Twitter announced last week that it had hired an interim chief compliance officer in India, as well as other executives tasked with ensuring that the company adheres to international laws.- READ MORE
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