Removal requests worldwide
Removal requests Jul 1 - Dec 31, 2013
| Country | Removal requests (court orders) | Removal requests (government agency, police, other) | Percentage where some content withheld | Accounts reported | Accounts withheld | Tweets withheld |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
NOTE: The data in these reports is as accurate and comprehensive as possible.
We’ve received more than five times as many content removal requests than in the prior reporting period. The majority of these requests originated from France, followed by Russia, Brazil, and the United Kingdom.
The data includes all instances where we employed our Country Withheld Content (CWC) tool. Over the last six months, we have continued to see an increase in the number of requests received and number of withholdings, including requests from six new countries (none of which resulted in any removals): Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Kuwait, Mexico, and the United Arab Emirates. We did, however, withhold content in five repeat countries: Brazil, France, India, Japan, and Russia.
Recent examples:
We received three court orders directing Twitter to remove defamatory content in Brazil.
We received over three hundred requests from a national advocacy association regarding illegal discriminatory content in France.
We received a court order directing Twitter to remove defamatory content about a manufacturer in India.
We received a court order directing Twitter to remove several defamatory Tweets in Japan.
We received fourteen requests from the Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom, Information Technologies and Mass Communications (Roskomnadzor) regarding content determined to violate Federal Law 139.
- ‘Percentage where some content withheld’ does not include removal requests, copyright-related complaints, or court orders that resulted in account suspensions for violating the Twitter Rules.
- Each request may identify multiple items to be removed. For example, a single request may ask us to remove individual Tweets or an entire user account.
- ‘Accounts specified’ includes the number of accounts identified in the government requests we’ve received.
- Where permitted, Twitter has published copies of the removal requests which have resulted in withheld content to Lumen.
- We may not comply with every request for a variety of reasons. For example, we do not comply with requests that fail to identify content on Twitter.