Twitter recently published its latest transparency and enforcement update, outlining all of the accounts and violations it took action on between January 1 and June 30, 2021. The update highlights key shifts and trends in platform usage and misuse, looking to improve user experience in-line with its freedom of speech ethos.

Total Transparency

To begin, Twitter says that it received a record 43,387 legal demands from governments to remove content within the stated period, which would impact around 196,878 accounts.

As Twitter explains:

“Of the total global volume of legal demands, 95% originated from only five countries (in decreasing order): Japan, Russia, Turkey, India, and South Korea. We withheld or required account holders to remove some or all of the reported content in response to 54% of these global legal demands.”

Last year, Twitter became a focus of Russian authorities, with the platform having even risked being banned for refusing requests from the Kremlin to remove certain content. Twitter eventually complied with the order, but only after Russian authorities slowed down the service. For the most part, tensions between the Russian government and Twitter remain high, with Twitter continuously grappling to keep its principles of free speech in more socio-politically stringent regions.

Not surprisingly, Indian authorities also sought to censor certain elements of the app, which Twitter obviously balked at, leading to yet another regional conflict. Japanese officials have also sought removals related to political conflicts, which Twitter should, more or less, acknowledge, given the fact that Twitter is the most popular social network in Japan.

It’s a rather challenging element for Twitter and one that looks to greatly undermine its growth, especially if any of these regions decide to drop the ban-hammer on the Bird. Each conflict also sees a price drop for Twitter’s shares, which kind of goes against its emerging use case as a tool for information sharing and as a facilitator of political discourse.

On another front, Twitter was asked to remove 4.7 million Tweets that violated its rules, accounting for another record amount. Twitter removed the most content that violated its ‘Sensitive Media’ policies, which turned out to be a good result because of Twitter’s decision to up the number of its moderators to review and assess content, thus revealing more content that’s subject to removal.

The Wrap

To simplify things – either way, the report is there if you want the full, scholarly details – Twitter has gotten more requests to take down content that supposedly breaches either platform rules or go against regional legislations, which, as a result, also saw it take more action to pacify claims, although it hasn’t fully satisfied all requests in that respect. All in all, it’s an interesting snapshot of Twitter’s enforcement actions, as well as of the key trends that could significantly impact its growth moving forward.

While it’s good that Twitter feverishly pursues its principles and ethos, it’s the same stubbornness that’s getting it flak from certain regional authorities, mainly because it refuses to take action on requests that it feels go against its idea of ‘free speech’. Perhaps it’ll do Twitter well to realize that not all regions acknowledge freedom of speech in the same way that western nations do, or at least in the same manner that Americans have perpetuated the idea. It’s good to fight for ideals and all, but not if it’ll cost you future growth. India, for example, is Twitter’s third-largest market with 24.5 million users. A ban in India would automatically equate to a loss of 24.5 million accounts, which would be disastrous for its user count and revenue, completely going against its current growth goals.

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Sources 

https://bit.ly/32A77tt