Twitter Forced 4.7 Million Tweet Removals During First Half of 2021

Twitter updated its Twitter Transparency Center with data covering the first half of 2021, revealing that users were required to remove roughly 4.7 million tweets during that time period for violations of the Twitter Rules. The social network said 68% of those tweets had tallied fewer than 100 impressions before being taken down, and 24% had totaled between 100 and 1,000 impressions. In total, according to Twitter, the tweets that were removed accounted for fewer than 0.1% of all tweet impressions from Jan. 1 through June 30, 2021. Twitter said it permanently suspended 453,754 unique accounts during the first six months of 2021 for violations of its policy on child sexual exploitation, with 98% of those accounts proactively identified and removed via a range of internal tools and industry hash sharing. And in the first quarter of 2021, 44,974 unique accounts were suspended for promotion of terrorism and violent organizations, with 93% of those proactively identified and removed. Twitter wrote in a blog post Tuesday, “Broadly, Twitter continues to see an overall downward trend in the number of violating accounts, which is likely due to changing behaviors of these actors, coupled with continued improvements of our defenses in this area.” Other figures from the update include: Government requests to preserve account information were down 4% from the last update last July, covering the second half of 2020, with the U.S. accounting for 57% of the total.The U.S. also became the single largest source of government information requests, with 3,026, or 24% of the global total. Those requests accounted for 27% of all accounts specified worldwide, and Twitter complied, in whole or part, with 68% of them.Twitter partially disclosed or did not disclose information in response to 64% of global government information requests, down 9%.During the first six months of 2021, Twitter received 43,387 legal demands from governments to remove content, specifying 196,878 accounts, which marked the highest total since the company released its first transparency report in 2012. The social network said 95% of those demands originated from five countries, in decreasing order: Japan, Russia, Turkey, India and South Korea. Twitter head of U.S. public policy Lauren Culbertson said in a statement, “An open internet that is global, available to all and built on open standards and the protection of human rights must be underpinned by meaningful transparency from both companies and governments. Today’s update to the Twitter Transparency Center is critical to that work. This update includes data that demonstrates the pressure governments around the world are increasingly placing on online platforms to remove speech—a trend that requires our full attention and effort.” Vice president of global public policy and philanthropy Sinead McSweeney added, “We’re facing unprecedented challenges as governments around the world increasingly attempt to intervene and remove content. This threat to privacy and freedom of expression is a deeply worrying trend that requires our full attention. Today’s update to the Twitter Transparency Center highlights our long-standing commitment to meaningful transparency and the pressing, urgent need to defend the free, secure and global open internet.”