India sent most number of requests seeking account info: Twitter report
NEW DELHI: India has surpassed the United States as the country that sent the most number of legal requests seeking information about accounts from Twitter, the social media company’s latest transparency report covering the period from July to December 2020 said on Wednesday.
The number of legal information requests sent from India accounted for 25% of the global volume and 15% of the global accounts specified, up from 21% and 25% respectively in the January-june, 2020 period.
Twitter’s global legal policy head Vijaya Gadde, in a Spaces conversation on the platform, said that it does not always cede to a government’s information requests. “Sometimes the requests are incomplete, broad in scope or the accounts have been deleted, in such a situation Twitter can challenge the requests,” she said.
The report stated that Twitter produced some or all of the requested information in response to 30% of the information requests globally, which came to 4,367 in all.
India also emerged as the country that sent the second highest numbers of takedown requests after Japan. Hindustan Times in June first reported that the number of blocking orders issued under section 69(A) of the IT Act had risen from 3,600 in 2019, to over 9,800 in 2020. In the first five months of 2021 (until May), the number increased to 6,000.
Twitter’s latest Transparency Report also added that accounts of 199 verified journalists and news outlets from around the world were subject to 361 legal demands, a 26% increase in such requests since the previous reporting period. “And, 94% of the total global volume of legal demands originated from only five countries (in decreasing order): Japan, India, Russia, Turkey, and South Korea,” it added, without giving per country data.
The company has recently been locked in a conflict with the Indian government over compliance with the new social media and intermediary guidelines, for which the deadline ended on May 25. It recently appointed a resident grievance redressal officer and released an India-specific grievance redressal report, prompting one its foremost critics, former union minister for electronics and information technology Ravi Shankar Prasad to say it was “assuring to see that Twitter was making an effort to comply”.
The confrontation between the Union government and Twitter began in January, when protests by farmers escalated in Delhi and its surrounding regions. Twitter refused to take down content relating to the protests.