“India’s 17,338 Legal demands between 2012 and 2021 account for 7% of the global legal demands (amounting) to 225,076 worldwide,” an internal report prepared by the ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY) stated, while noting that Twitter has 2.36 crore users in India — its third largest user base globally.
“India is 7% of Twitter’s global user base and so is the volume of removal requests, (from India),” according to the official analysis.
ET has reviewed a copy of the report.
In comparison, Japan which accounts for 18% of Twitter’s global user base has issued 32% of global legal demands while South Korea has issued 5% of removal requests with just a 2% user base,” the report revealed.
A spokesperson for Twitter told ET that the company had no comments to share on the findings.
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Ongoing fracas
This latest analysis comes even as Twitter and the central government are engaged in a faceoff over the increase in the number of official demands for takedowns and account blocks. Earlier this month, the social media platform approached the Karnataka High Court challenging at least 39 such blocking orders issued by the union IT ministry.
To be sure, while the government claims that its takedown requests are in line with the rise of internet consumption in the country, cybersecurity firms rank the total number of legal demands made by India till 2020 — to social media and other technology platforms — just below that issued by Russia, which leads globally in the number of requests made.
An October 2021 research report by Comparitech, said the Indian government had until 2020, sent 97,631 content removal requests to various social media and big tech platforms such as Twitter, Google, Facebook, YouTube and others.
Meanwhile, MeitY in its latest review claimed that Twitter’s compliance rate in India was “abysmally low” compared to its action in other countries. The report stated that the microblogging platform has an overall compliance rate of 13% in the United States, 21%in Brazil, 16% in Canada, 38% in Japan and 19% in New Zealand.
“While in India it is just 11%. More worrisome is that there were 76 Indian court orders to Twitter, of which (it has) complied with only 34% as per Twitter’s transparency report,” the MeitY analysis stated.
ET had earlier reported that the IT ministry, in its next fortnightly meeting with social media intermediaries, may raise the issue of non-compliance, specifically with respect to its legal and content takedown orders.
The IT ministry is “likely to meet (social media) intermediaries on Friday and may raise the issue”, according to people aware of the matter.
Global perspective
Official sources told ET that the IT ministry’s detailed report, which is being reviewed at the highest levels within the ministry, reveals that content takedown orders issued by India are “not as high” when viewed from a global context.
Citing data from Twitter’s own global transparency data, the MeitY report states that during the first six months of 2021, 95% of the total legal demands directed at Twitter originated from five countries, namely Japan, Russia, Turkey, India, and South Korea.
The American company has not published any data on its transparency portal further to June 2021, the report noted, while pointing out that “India accounted for a mere 11% of global legal demands for content takedown (during Jan- June 2021) down from 18% in the previous reporting period”.
India dropped from being the second largest to the fourth largest submitter of requests to Twitter.
“This drop is despite the massive disparity in the size of the top four countries concerning population and Twitter users,” the internal report notes.
Further, MeitY while drawing from technology major Google’s data on content removal noted that India was “never out of line” with the global trends when it came to giving orders for content removal.
These takedown orders are “necessary to prevent apocalypse” since an increased number of users has meant a “rampant rise in malicious posts with implications for national security, law and order and threat to the country’s citizens”, the ministry’s analysis said.
Most requests to Google for removal in India are on impersonation (51%), followed by defamation (17%), obscenity/nudity (7%), the report noted.
It also highlighted India’s “proximity to high-risk nations” adding that the country is “highly vulnerable to various terrorism and anti-national activities”.
Google did not respond to queries from ET on the latest findings.
