The company complied with 69% of requests made by the US government late last year
Twitter might be one lightning rod of social media platform these days, but if there’s one topic Elon Musk’s attempt to buy out the platform and his subsequent attempt to abort the purchase has put to the forefront, it’s got to be “free speech.” As a corporate-owned entity, it doesn’t need to be a bastion of it, but given the rollercoaster of developments it’s been on, it’d like to show that it does care.
Enter Twitter’s latest Transparency Report, the twentieth it has published. Each report details the tweet takedown requests it has facilitated for a six-month period. This latest one focuses on the back half of 2021. The company highlights increasing encroachment from governments to get more tweets down as well as a surge in requests to uncover more information about users (via Engadget).
Twitter received 47,572 legal requests for information on 198,931 during those six months, a record number. Governments made 103% more legal requests than during the first half of the year. The United States sent one out of every five requests — not particularly surprising considering that the fact-finding mission for the January 6th riots on Capitol Hill was in full gear. India, Japan, and France follow close by with around 2,000 requests each. Germany is fifth with 634 requests.
Twitter complied with 69% of the US government’s requests, though it wasn’t clear how many of them were in partial or full compliance. The company was particularly proud of denying 29 civil requests to unmask anonymous accounts in protection of those users’ First Amendment rights. It has won one lawsuit against a request. Another is pending a ruling.
Twitter also gave a courtesy mention about bot accounts in talking about its Automated Account Labels program. All bot-operated accounts are free to self-identify — if you aren’t using services like @WhatTheFare or @threadreaderapp, you’re definitely missing out.
As for whether Twitter becomes the social media platform of choice in the United States anytime soon… well, Facebook might be stalling out, but that doesn’t mean Twitter is automatically set for growth. We’ve seen that with Musk’s recent drama.
