Twitter Publishes Transparency Report; Reveals Data About Accounts Suspended and Content Removed

In an update on its Transparency Reporting, Twitter announced in a blog post that it required users to remove 6,586,109 pieces of content because it violated Twitter Rules in the first half of 2022.

The company further observed that this was an increase of 29% from the second half of 2021. While Twitter had to take "enforcement action" on 5,096,272 accounts during the period, it suspended 1,618,855 accounts.

The micro-blogging site also published the policies for which it had taken action. There were 1,315,670 actions taken for Sensitive Media, followed by Hateful Conduct and Abuse/Harassment. Maximum accounts were suspended due to Child Sexual Exploitation, whereas most pieces of content were removed for Hateful Conduct and Abuse/Harassment.

The company also published that it received approximately 53,000 legal requests for removing content from governments across the world. As per Twitter, the most requests for removing content came from Japan, South Korea, Turkey, and India.

Twitter received over 16,000 requests for user data from governments across 85 countries. The top five countries that requested data were India, the United States, France, Japan, and Germany. However, the company did not give out information about how many requests it complied with.

Twitter's disclosure via its Transparency Reporting was on the same day when the European Union announced that social media platforms, including Twitter, needed to comply with new landmark rules as per its new internet rules.

One of the European Union's internet rules for tech companies is to publish online transparency reports.

The European Union featured a list of 19 tech companies that would have to share company data with authorities in a bid to handle disinformation and have external and independent auditing.

It also announced on its website that companies that failed to comply with its rules could end up with a fine of up to 6 percent of global revenue, or might even be banned from operating in the European Union.