Twitter Reinvents Its Transparency Report as the Twitter Transparency Center

Twitter “reimagined and rebuilt” its biannual Twitter Transparency Report and it is now the Twitter Transparency Center. The new website hosts all of Twitter’s disclosed data in one place, and it includes data visualizations to make it easier for people to compare trends over time, as well as a country comparison module. “Tool tips” are also included to explain key terms and provide more insights on terms used by the social network, and there are new policy categories to better align with the Twitter Rules. The Twitter Transparency Report contains a history of the company’s transparency milestones and updates, as well as new metrics and methodology on enforcement of the Twitter Rules, starting in July 2018. The social network said reports will soon be published in Arabic, French, German, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish and Turkish. Twitter said in a blog post, “Transparency is core to the work we do at Twitter. The open nature of our service has led to unprecedented challenges around protecting freedom of expression and privacy rights as governments around the world increasingly attempt to intervene in this open exchange of information. We believe that transparency is a key principle in our mission to protect the Open Internet and advancing the Internet as a global force for good.” The latest data covers the period of July 1 through Dec. 31, 2019, and Twitter said the next update will encompass the first six months of 2020. Highlights of data shared by Twitter follow: State-backed information operations: Twitter recently shared its largest disclosure to date, adding 32,242 accounts to the archive, which now contains more than 9 terabytes of media on over 83,000 accounts and more than 200 million tweets. Data sets of information operations in over 15 countries are included.Platform manipulation: Twitter said its proactive detection of behavior such as bots resulted in a 10% reduction in anti-spam challenges.Terrorism and violent extremism: Action was taken on 86,799 unique accounts during the six-month period, with 74% of those accounts proactively suspended using the social network’s internal, proprietary tools.Child sexual exploitation: 257,768 unique accounts were suspended during the last six months of 2019 for violating these policies, with 84% of those proactively suspended.Twitter Rules enforcement: The social network reported a 47% rise in accounts locked or suspended.Abuse and harassment: The number of accounts where action was taken for violations rose 95% compared with the previous reporting period.Hateful conduct: There was a 54% uptick in the number of accounts that faced action against them from Twitter.Sensitive media, including graphic violence and adult content: Action was taken on 39% more accounts than in the previous reporting period.Promoting suicide and self-harm: Twitter took action on 29% more accounts for violations of this sort than in the first half of 2019.Illegal or certain regulated goods and services: In this new addition to the Twitter Transparency Report, action was taken on 60,807 unique accounts.Private information: There was a 41% jump in the number of accounts that were acted upon due to “doxxing.”Non-consensual nudity: The social network credited internal improvements and extensive retraining with a 109% leap in the number of accounts that saw actions taken against them.Violent threats: Twitter saw a 5% drop in the number of accounts where action was taken.Information requests: Roughly 21% more information requests from governments and law enforcement agencies globally were submitted compared with the previous period, with the number of accounts specified in those requests rising by almost 63%. The U.S. continued to account for the lion’s share, with 26% of all requests, trailed by Japan (22%).Content removal: The social network received 27,538 legal demands regarding 98,595 accounts, the largest totals since its first Transparency Report in 2012. They came from 51 different countries, but 86% originated in Japan, Russia and Turkey.Copyright and trademark actions: Twitter reported a 13% increase in Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notices, affecting 163% more accounts than in the first half of 2019, and 7% more trademark notices than in the previous reporting period. Twitter said in its blog post, “The fundamental belief in the power of open, public conversation inspired Twitter to launch one of the industry's first transparency reports back in 2012. At that time, our goal was to provide the public with regular insights into government pressure that impacted the public, whether through overt attempts at political censorship or by way of soliciting account data through information requests. The world has changed significantly since 2012. In 2020, it is more important than ever that we shine a light on our own practices, including how we enforce the Twitter Rules, our ongoing work to disrupt global state-backed information operations and the increased attempts by governments to request information about account holders.”