Twitter Sees Jump in Government Demands to Remove Content of News Outlets

Twitter noticed a surge in authorities calls for worldwide in 2020 to take down content material posted by journalists and information shops, in line with knowledge launched by the social media platform.

In its transparency report printed on Wednesday, Twitter mentioned verified accounts of 199 journalists and information shops on its platform confronted 361 authorized calls for from governments to take away content material within the second half of 2020, up 26 % from the primary half of the 12 months.

The biannual report on Twitter’s enforcement of coverage guidelines and the knowledge and removing requests it receives comes as social media corporations together with Facebook and Alphabet’s YouTube face authorities scrutiny worldwide over the content material allowed on their platforms.

Twitter finally eliminated 5 tweets from journalists and information publishers, the report mentioned. India submitted a lot of the removing requests, adopted by Turkey, Pakistan, and Russia.

The social media platform didn’t beforehand observe such knowledge on requests pertaining to journalists or publishers.

India topped the checklist for info requests by governments within the second half of 2020, overtaking the United States for the primary time, the report mentioned.

Some international locations have moved to ban or prohibit entry to social media platforms. On Monday, Cuba started curbing entry to Facebook and messaging apps like Telegram amid widespread anti-government protests. Last month, Nigeria banned Twitter from the nation and ordered tv and radio stations to not use the platform to collect info.

The firm mentioned globally it acquired over 14,500 requests for info from July 1 to December 31, and it produced some or all the info in response to 30 % of the requests.

Such requests can embody governments or different entities asking for the identities of individuals tweeting beneath pseudonyms.

Twitter additionally acquired greater than 38,500 authorized calls for to take down varied content material, down 9 % from the primary half of 2020, It complied with 29 % of the calls for.

Twitter has been embroiled in a number of conflicts with international locations, notably India over its new content material rules for social media. Last week, the corporate mentioned it had employed an interim chief compliance officer in India and would appoint different executives to adjust to the principles.

In the up to date transparency report, Twitter mentioned the variety of impressions, or views of a tweet, that violated Twitter’s guidelines accounted for lower than 0.1 % of the entire world views within the second half of 2020, the primary time the platform has launched such knowledge.

The firm mentioned its expertise is proactively figuring out greater than 65 % of abusive content material for human evaluation, reasonably than counting on experiences submitted by Twitter customers.

Like different social media corporations, Twitter has struggled to police hate speech, misinformation and different abuses on its service. Chief Executive Jack Dorsey was among the many tech leaders who testified earlier than Congress in March on misinformation.

Major social media corporations have been beneath hearth this week over racist abuse on their platforms directed at Black gamers on the England soccer crew.

© Thomson Reuters 2021