Twitter's Censorship May Be Governments Fault

Written By BlabberBuzz | Friday, 16 July 2021 12:50 AM
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Twitter's Censorship May Be Governments Fault

Twitter Inc. saw an increase in government requests worldwide in 2020 to remove content published by journalists and news outlets, according to data issued by the social media platform.

In its clarity report published Wednesday, Twitter said established accounts of 199 journalists and news outlets on its program met 361 legal orders from governments to block content in the second half of 2020, up 26% from the first half of the year.

The biannual report on Twitter's implementation of system rules and the information and removal requests it gets comes as social media companies including Facebook Inc and Alphabet Inc's YouTube face government review worldwide over the content released on their platforms.

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Twitter finally removed five tweets from journalists and news publishers, the report said. India offered most of the removal requests, followed by Turkey, Pakistan, and Russia.

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The social media platform did not previously track such data on requests concerning journalists or publishers.

India exceeded the list for data requests by governments in the second half of 2020, overtaking the United States for the first time, the report said.

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Some nations have traveled to forbid or restrict paths to social media platforms. On Monday, Cuba began restraining access to Facebook and messaging apps like Telegram amid popular anti-government protests. In the previous month, Nigeria banned Twitter from the country and directed television and radio stations not to use the platform to collect information.

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The company said globally it got over 14,500 demands for information from July 1 to Dec. 31, and it provided some or all of the information in response to 30% of the requests.

Such requests can include governments or other entities asking for the identities of people tweeting under pseudonyms.

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Twitter also received more than 38,500 legal demands to take down various content, down 9% from the first half of 2020, It complied with 29% of the demands.

Twitter has been entangled in several conflicts with countries, distinctly India over its new content controls for social media. Last week, the company said it had hired an interim chief compliance officer in India and would appoint other executives to comply with the rules.

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In the updated clarity report, Twitter said the number of impressions, or views of a tweet, that broke Twitter's rules accounted for less than 0.1% of the total global views in the second half of 2020, the first time the platform has released such data.

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The company said its technology is proactively recognizing more than 65% of abusive content for human review, rather than relying on reports presented by Twitter users.

Like other social media companies, Twitter has tried to police hate speech, misinformation, and other abuses on its service. Chief Executive Jack Dorsey was with the tech officials who testified before Congress in March on misinformation.

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