Account information requests jump from India: Twitter

New Delhi:  The Indian government made information requests for 422 Twitter accounts in the July-December 2018 period while law enforcement agencies in the country asked the micro-blogging platform to remove 667 accounts for violating the law of the land — a massive jump from 237 accounts in the previous reporting period.

The government had made information requests for 355 Twitter accounts in the previous January-June 2018 period.

According to Twitter’s 14th biannual Transparency Report released late Thursday, the company provided some information to the Indian government in 18 per cent of cases.

In the case of 667 account removal requests, Twitter complied with 2 per cent of the them.

There were 49 emergency disclosure requests from the Indian government and Twitter produced information in 10 per cent of the cases.

The Indian government asked Twitter to preserve information for 100 accounts and Twitter specified 30 such accounts.

“Upon receipt of a valid preservation request, we will temporarily preserve, but not disclose, a snapshot of the relevant account information for 90 days pending issuance and service of valid legal process,” said Twitter.

The company this time received government information requests from 86 different countries.

The US now comprises only 30 per cent of global government information requests and 35 per cent of all global accounts specified in the same category.

The second highest volume of information requests were submitted by Japan (24 per cent of global information requests, comprising 20 per cent of global accounts specified).

Requests from the United Kingdom (13 per cent), India (6 per cent), Germany (6 per cent), and France (5 per cent) together account for 30 per cent of all global information requests, and 29 per cent of all global accounts specified.

“We received roughly 8 per cent fewer global legal requests to remove content, impacting approximately 2 per cent fewer accounts, compared to the previous reporting period. However, there was an 84 per cent increase year-over-year between 2017 and 2018,” said Vijaya Gadde, Legal, Policy and Trust & Safety Lead at Twitter.

Published on: May 10, 2019 at 17:20 IST

IANS