Account removal requests jump from India: Twitter

Between July and December 2017, the Indian government made 315 Twitter account information requests, up from 261 made during the January-June period, and asked the micro-blogging website to remove 144 accounts, up from 102 from the previous period.

According to Twitter's 12th bi-annual Transparency Report that was released late Thursday, the company withheld content in three per cent of the account removal requests from the Indian government/police and courts (there were two account removal requests by courts and 142 from the government).

In 315 account information requests from India, Twitter "produced some information" in 15 per cent of such requests.

Twitter defines the government's information requests as requests issued by law enforcement and other government agencies.

"This data includes government requests (and other complaints of illegal content from authorised reporters) we've received to remove or withhold content on Twitter from India," the micro-blogging website said.

Overall, since August 2015, the company has removed over 1.2 million accounts globally that promoted terrorism.

"During the second half of last year, we permanently suspended 274,460 such accounts," the report noted.

Twitter received 3 per cent fewer government information requests (emergency disclosure requests and non-emergency requests) that specified 52 per cent more accounts from July 1 through December 31 compared to the previous reporting period.

The total number of account requests originating from the US decreased by 17 per cent.

The US remains the top requester, submitting 28 per cent of total government information requests.

"While still the top requester, the percentage of requests from the US has decreased dramatically since 2012 when it accounted for 80 per cent of global information requests received by Twitter," the report noted.

In line with the last three reports, Japan is the second top requesting country. Japan submitted 24 per cent of total information requests that specified 12 per cent of the total accounts reported.

"For the cases in which Twitter disclosed some account information, we provided non-content information in 93 per cent of the cases and content information in 7 per cent of the cases," said the report.

"We notify users of specified accounts, of requests for their account information unless we're prohibited or the request falls into one of the exceptions to our user notice policy (e.g., emergencies regarding imminent threat to life, child sexual exploitation, terrorism)," Twitter added.