Twitter released a transparency report today much like Google’s transparency report and this describes how governments around the world request Twitter for information on users and also request them to remove content from Twitter’s website.
The US accounts for the bulk of the information requests with 679 out of the total 849 requests that came between January 1st 2012 and June 30th 2012 originating from there.
India also figures in the report but with less than 10 requests, and Twitter didn’t comply with any of these requests.
Twitter says that this could be because of several reasons like the request was too broad, or it didn’t specify a user account, but beyond that they don’t see why they didn’t comply with the request.
India didn’t figure in any requests for removal of information and in fact there were only 5 countries – France, Greece, Pakistan, Turkey and United Kingdom that sent in requests for removing content.
This is a great report by Twitter because it shows how different governments request data from it and it will be especially interesting to Indians who have seen their government make noises about clamping down social media from time to time.
The number is low right now, and let’s hope that it remains that way always.
