Twitter removed five tweets from journalists and news publishers. India submitted most of the removal requests, followed by Turkey, Pakistan and Russia.
Verified Twitter 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. This went up 26% from the first half of the year as has been published by Twitter in its transparency report recently.
There is government scrutiny worldwide of social media companies including Facebook Inc and Alphabet Inc’s YouTube over content. The biannual report on enforcement of policy rules and the information and removal requests Twitter receives comes as
Twitter Inc saw a surge in government demands worldwide in 2020 to take down content posted by journalists and news outlets, according to data.
The highest number of removal requests came from India and then came Turkey, Pakistan and Russia. It removed five tweets from journalists and news publishers, according to the report.
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.
Twitter received over 14,500 requests for information from July 1 to Dec. 31, and it produced some or all of the information in response to 30% of the requests
Some countries have moved to ban or restrict access to social media platforms. On Monday, Cuba began curbing access to Facebook and messaging apps like Telegram amid widespread anti-government protests. Last month, Nigeria banned Twitter from the country and ordered television and radio stations not to use the platform to gather information.
Twitter received over 14,500 requests for information from July 1 to Dec. 31, and it produced some or all of the information in response to 30% of the requests.
Like other social media companies, Twitter has struggled to police hate speech, misinformation and other abuses on its service. Over racist abuse directed at Black players on the England soccer team, certain social media companies were under fire this week.