Twitter provides insight in content removal requests with Transparency Report

Yesterday, Twitter unveiled its first Transparency Report. The primary goal of this report is to provide insight in government requests received for user information, government requests received to withhold content and notice-and-takedown requests received from copyright holders. The report also shows whether or not Twitter has taken action on these requests. 

The United States requested user information 679 times, involving 948 user accounts. Japan follows with 98 requests for 147 user accounts. The United Kingdom and Canada share the third place with 11 requests. All other countries on the list had less than 10 requests. Jeremy Keller, Manager Legal Policy, states on his blog that Twitter has received more government requests in the first half of 2012 than in the entirety of 2011. 

Twitter received court orders to remove information from Greece and Turkey and formal government requests to remove or withhold content from France, Pakistan and the United Kingdom. However, Twitter did not remove content in any of the cases. Besides, this data does not include reports of violations of the Twitter Rules. 

Twitter received 3378 copyright takedown notices in the first six months of 2012. Twitter removed material in 38% of the cases. More specifically, 5275 tweets and 599 pieces of media were removed, affecting 5874 user accounts. No further specifications are given. 

Twitter will publish an updated version of its Transparency Report twice a year. Hereby, Twitter acts in the footsteps of Google, that releases a biannual Transparency Report for two years now. 

Read more about content removal on FutureOfCopyright.com:

• Google removes 250.000 copyright infringing search results a week
• Google follows Twitter: Country specific NTD to comply with local law
• Twitter to remove unlawful tweets: threat to free speech or the reality of internet business?

Sources: Twitter Transparency Report 

By: Marjolein van der Heide