India accounted for highest number of govt requests for account info: Twitter

India was the single largest source of government requests for account information received by Twitter accounting for 25 per cent of the global volume in the JulyDecember 2020 period the microblogging platform said on WednesdayIndia also ranked second in terms of volume of legal demands for content removal after Japan Twitter said in a blog that provided an update to its transparency reportTwitter brings out with a biannual report where it shares details on the number of government and legal requests removal requests and data around accounts actioned for various violations and breach of rulesIn its latest blog Twitter said it produced some or all of the requested information in response to 30 per cent of the global information requests by governments in JulyDecember 2020 periodIndia is the single largest source of government information requests accounting for 25 per cent of the global volume and 15 per cent of the global accounts specified The second highest volume of information requests originated from the US comprising 22 per cent of global information requestsrdquo it addedTwitter said the US submitted the highest volume of global emergency requests 34 per cent followed by Japan 17 per cent and South Korea 16 per centDuring the reporting period JulyDecember 2020 Twitter received 38524 legal demands to remove content specifying 131933 accounts The platform withheld or otherwise removed some or all of the reported content in response to 29 per cent of these global legal demandsAlthough there was a 9 per cent decrease in the number of legal demands Twitter received compared to the previous reporting period these requests sought removal of content from the largest number of accounts ever in a single reporting periodrdquo Twitter addedAbout 94 per cent of the total global volume of legal demands originated from only five countries in decreasing order Japan India Russia Turkey and South KoreaThe USbased company said accounts of 199 verified journalists and news outlets from around the world were subject to 361 legal demands a 26 per cent increase in these requests since the previous reporting periodIt is pertinent to mention here that Twitter had come under fire over its failure to comply with the IT rules in India despite repeated reminders from the Government Twitter which has an estimated 175 crore users in India lost its legal shield as an intermediary in the country becoming liable for any unlawful content posted by its usersTwitter recently appointed a Resident Grievance Officer days after it designated a Chief Compliance Officer and also released its first India Transparency Report on Sunday to comply with the new IT rulesIn its blog on Wednesday Twitter said impressions on violative tweets accounted for less than 01 per cent of all impressions for all tweets globally from JulyDecember 2020 The impressions metric captures the number of views a violative tweet received prior to removalDuring this time Twitter removed 38 million tweets that violated its rules About 77 per cent of these received fewer than 100 impressions prior to removal 17 per cent had received between 100 and 1000 impressions and 6 per cent of the removed tweets had ore than 1000 impressionsOur goal is to improve these numbers over time taking enforcement action on violative content before its even viewed Twitter saidThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever