India Accounted For 18% Of 43,387 Global Content Removal Requests To Twitter

With governments around the world now taking an aggressive stance against Big Tech companies like Meta (Facebook) and Twitter, regulation of these platforms is bound to shoot up.

Records from 2021 show that government demands to remove content from Twitter hit a record-high in 2021. A surge in demand was noted in the first six months of last year, with global governments making 43,387 legal demands to remove 196,878 accounts between January-June 2021.

95% of these requests came from a small pool of countries including India. Other countries on the list are Japan, Russia, Turkey, and South Korea.

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Increasing interference from governments

In response to 54% of government demands, Twitter "withheld" access to relevant content or directly required users to take their posts in response. While gatekeepers of freedom of speech may argue that this is counter-productive, critics of social media now feel companies should be held accountable for allowing the spread of hate speech and fake news.

Reuters

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In a statement, Twitter's Vice President of Global Public Policy and Philanthropy Sin¨¦ad McSweeney referred to this requests as "unprecedented challenges", claiming that "governments around the world increasingly attempt to intervene and remove content." McSweeney called it a "threat to privacy and freedom of expression [that] is a deeply worrying trend that requires our full attention."

India accounts for 18% requests

In its latest bi-annual Transparency Report, Twitter claimed that Indian government accounted for 18% of all requests received by Twitter to take down content - the second-highest for the first half of 2021.

Also read: Indian I&B Ministry's Twitter Account Was Hacked And Changed To Elon Musk

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In addition, India accounted for one-fourth of all government requests to preserve account information. This number is slightly lower than the previous six months. Between July and December 2020, Indian government accounted for 25% of all content-related requests made to Twitter.

For the Jan-June 2021 period, India's requests stood at 1,987 - down from 3,486 earlier. What do you think - should governments be able to direct tech companies to take down content? Let us know in the comments below. For more in the world of technology and science, keep reading Indiatimes.com.

References

Rodrigo, C. M. (2022, January 25). Government demands to remove Twitter content hit record high. TheHill.

Das, S. (2022, January 27). India accounted for 18% of all govt info requests to Twitter in 2021 first half. Mint.