India was among the top 4 countries to send Twitter legal directions to remove content on the behalf of the state, according to Twitter’s transparency disclosures for January to June 2022, said the microblogging site on Wednesday.
Twitter received 53,000 legal requests to remove content from governments during the reporting period. Twitter’s compliance rate for these requests varied by requester countries. The top requesting countries were Japan, South Korea, Turkey and India.
On government information request for user data, Twitter said it has received 16,000 such directions. “ The top five requesting countries seeking account information in H1 2022 were India, the US, France, Japan, and Germany,” it added.
These numbers gain significance at a time when Twitter is embroiled in a legal dispute with the Indian government on content moderation policies. Moreover, recently, Twitter CEO Elon Musk has also tacitly admitted to blocking and censuring content in India to “keep Twitter’s Indian employees out of prison”.
Twitter did not disclose as to what extent it complied with the Indian government’s takedown requests for content. It must be noted that former Twitter CEO Parag Agarwal was at the helm, between January to June 2022, the time period to which these figures correspond. Elon Musk became the CEO of the microblogging site in October 2022.
However, since Musk’s takeover, it largely appears that Twitter has complied with the Indian government’s legal directives to take down content. Twitter suspended the accounts of many journalists during the manhunt for the pro-Khalistani figure Amritpal Singh. Twitter also took down tweets featuring the controversial BBC documentary on Prime Minister, Narendra Modi.
The platform also announced that it will not be publishing a formal transparency report for the year 2022, as the platform reviews its approach to transparency reporting. This change in directive corresponds with the time when Musk took over as the CEO.
Published on April 26, 2023
