Illustration: Annelise Capossela/Axios
Twitter warned Thursday that local, state and national governments around the world are asking the company to remove content and provide private user account information at an alarming rate.
News direction: The company said in a new report that it received a record number of legal requests from governments, nearly 50,000 over a six-month period last year.
Details: 47,572 legal requests were for 198,931 unique accounts.
- The United States accounts for the majority of requests for account information, accounting for 20% of requests, for Twitter.
- Japan had the most requests for Twitter to remove content Associated Press reports.
- Twitter said it complied with about 40% of all requests for user data.
The big picture: This is not an isolated event as Twitter said the number of requests has increased after each reporting period.
- Similarly, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, said last year that it has seen an increase in government requests for private user data.
What they say: “We’re seeing governments become more aggressive in how they try to use legal tactics to unmask people who use our service, to collect information about account owners and also using legal requests as a way to try and to shut people up,” Yoel Roth, head. for Twitter’s security and integrity, said Thursday, per the AP.
- Rob Mahoney, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, told the AP that governments are increasingly trying to censor online content and silence critics.
- “This increase in government requests to remove content and information for journalists is part of a global trend of increased censorship and information manipulation,” Mahoney said. “Social media platforms are vital for journalists and they must do more to resist government efforts to silence critical voices.”
