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Twitter sees surge in government demands to remove content of reporters, with India submitting the most requests
- Twitter said legal demands to remove content of journalists and news outlets were up 26 per cent in the second half of 2020
- India, Turkey, Pakistan and Russia had the most removal requests, and India topped the US in information requests for the first time
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Twitter Inc saw a surge in government demands worldwide in 2020 to take down content posted by journalists and news outlets, according to data released by the social media platform.
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In its transparency report published on Wednesday, Twitter said verified accounts of 199 journalists and news outlets on its platform faced 361 legal demands from governments to remove content in the second half of 2020, up 26 per cent from the first half of the year.
The biannual report on Twitter’s enforcement of policy rules and the information and removal requests it receives comes as social media companies including Facebook Inc and Alphabet Inc’s YouTube face government scrutiny worldwide over the content allowed on their platforms.
Twitter ultimately removed five tweets from journalists and news publishers, the report said. India submitted most of the removal requests, followed by Turkey, Pakistan and Russia.
The social media platform did not previously track such data on requests pertaining to journalists or publishers.
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India topped the list for information requests by governments in the second half of 2020, overtaking the United States for the first time, the report said.
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