July 30, 2022
Governments Are Now Demanding Censorship and Private User Info at an Alarming Rate, Twitter Warns
Twitter warned Thursday (July 28) that local, state and national governments around the world are asking the company to remove content and provide private information of user accounts at an alarming rate.
Between July and December last year, the number of legal demands from governments targeting journalists that Twitter received increased substantially.
According to a report by the company, there was a 103% increase in the number of legal demands targeting verified journalists.
The platform received 47,572 demands targeting 198,931 accounts. 11,460 of those demands were made by governments, with 20% coming from the US government.
“We continue to see a concerning trend toward attempts to limit global press freedom, with an increase in government legal demands targeting journalists, as well as an overall increasing number of legal demands on accounts – both represent record highs since reporting began,” Twitter wrote in the report.
Twitter reported that it opposed 29 requests for account information from the US government. But it complied with 69% of these requests.
Similarly, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, said last year it has seen an increase in government requests for private user data.
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