Twitter Inc saw a surge in demands over the course of last year from governments around the world to take down content posted by journalists and news outlets, data to be released by the social media platform for the first time will show.
Twitter said verified accounts of 199 journalists and news outlets on its platform globally were subject to 361 legal demands from governments to remove the content in the second half of 2020, an increase of 26 per cent from the first half of the year.
It declined to elaborate on which countries submitted the demands, or how many of the legal demands pertaining to journalists or news outlets the platform complied with.
The new details in Twitter’s biannual report on its enforcement of policy rules and the information and removal requests it receives come as Twitter and other social media companies including Facebook and Alphabet’s YouTube are facing scrutiny from governments around the world content allowed on their platforms.
