Twitter Removed 3.8M Tweets for Violating Twitter Rules in Second Half of 2020

Twitter shared its Transparency Center update covering the second half of 2020, which included new data on the number of views the most violative tweets on its platform received prior to their removal. The social network said that from July 1 through Dec. 31, 2020, impressions on violative tweets accounted for fewer than 0.1% of total impressions globally. Twitter removed 3.8 million tweets during that time period for violations of the Twitter Rules, and 77% of those received fewer than 100 impressions prior to removal, while 17% received between 100 and 1,000 and just 6% tallied over 1,000. The social network challenged 10,320,924 accounts for platform manipulation focused on Covid-19 discussions during the last six months of 2020, suspending 597 accounts and removing ,846 pieces of content. Twitter said that since introducing its Covid-19 guidance last year, a total of 11.7 million accounts have been challenged, with 1,496 of them suspended and more than 43,010 pieces of content removed worldwide. The company received 4,367 requests for user information during the six-month period, providing some or all of the requested information in 30% of those cases. India accounted for the most government information requests, at 25% of global volume and 15% of global accounts specified, followed by the U.S. at 22% of global requests. The highest volume of global emergency requests came from the U.S. (34%), followed by Japan (17%) and South Korea (16%). Twitter received 38,524 legal demands to remove content specifying 131,933 accounts during the second half of 2020, withholding or removing some or all of the reported content in 29% of those demands, or a total of 11,091. The social network wrote in a blog post, “Although there was a 9% decrease in the number of legal demands Twitter received compared with the previous reporting period, these requests sought removal of content from the largest number of accounts ever in a single reporting period.” Notably, the accounts of 199 verified journalists from around the world were subject to 361 legal demands, up 26% from the first six months of 2020. The company said 94% of the total global volume of legal demands came from five countries (in order): Japan, India, Russia, Turkey and South Korea. Other information from the second-half-2020 update to the Twitter Transparency Center included: The number of accounts with actions taken against them for abuse and harassment, 964,459, was up 142% from the first six months of 2020 due to initiatives such as more precise machine learning.Accounts suspended for violations of Twitter’s child sexual exploitation policy rose 6%, to 464,804, 90% of which were proactively identified by employing internal proprietary tools and industry hash sharing initiatives.The social network took enforcement action on 27,087 accounts containing non-consensual nudity, up 194% from the previous reporting period.The number of accounts permanently suspended for violations of Twitter’s terrorism and violent extremism policies was down 35%, to 58,750, with 96% of them proactively identified using a combination of machine learning and human review.Tweets related to the 2020 presidential election in the U.S. drove civic integrity policy enforcements up 175% compared with the first half of the year. The social network wrote, “From Oct. 27 through Nov. 11, for example, we labeled approximately 300,000 tweets that contained claims that were disputed and potentially misleading.”A total of 1,126,990 accounts were actioned for violations of the company’s hateful conduct policy during the second half of 2020, up 77% from 635,415 in the first six months of the year.Twitter took actions against 188,561 accounts for promoting suicide and self-harm during the period, up 192% from 64,610 in the previous period.Anti-spam challenges rose by about 6% when compared with the previous reporting period, while the number of spam reports fell 14%.Submissions of Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notices fell by 2%, affecting 44% fewer accounts. Tweets withheld slipped by 25% compared with the previous reporting period, while media withheld was down 43%.Roughly 2.3% of accounts on the social network enabled at least one two-factor authentication method during the last six months of 2020.

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Twitter Removed 3.8M Tweets for Violating Twitter Rules in Second Half of 2020

Impressions on those tweets accounted for less than 0.1% of total global impressions

David Cohen

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David Cohen