What's the news: India was among the top five countries requesting removal of content on Twitter as well as among countries seeking user account information, said the microblogging platform on April 25, 2023. Reviewing transparency reports for the first half of 2022 i.e., between January 1- June 30, 2022, Twitter said it received approximately 53,000 legal requests from governments across the world to remove content. The top countries making such a request were Japan, South Korea, Turkey, and India. Similarly, it received over 16,000 government information requests for user data from over 85 countries during this period. While the disclosure rates vary by requesting country, the top five countries for this category were India, the United States, France, Japan, and Germany. Why this matters: Transparency reports provide insight into how free speech is being regulated on social media platforms. Both India and Japan have made it to the top five for categories that monitor online content as well as data of the users posting that content. This raises concerns about citizens' right to free speech in the two countries. While Twitter does not have further country-wise data, it is important to note India’s interest in these two departments. Twitter removed over a million accounts: Over the first half of 2022, Twitter suspended as many as 1,618,855 accounts for violating Twitter Rules. According to Twitter, this signifies a 28 percent increase in suspensions compared to the second half of 2021. The highest number of accounts, 691,704 accounts, were suspended for child…
