Twitter Is Facing More Global Government Demands For Content Removal Than Ever Before

Twitter released its latest Transparency Report on Thursday, revealing details about government requests for information requests and removal of content, as well as data on Twitter's own enforcement of policy violations.

The social platform began publishing these reports biannually in 2012. This means that the latest report only addresses the first half of 2018—and the company saw a massive increase in legal demands from governments. 

"Internet freedom and online expression remain under significant pressure and constraint, a trend we have observed across recent reports," Twitter wrote in a blog post. "Twitter received approximately 80% more global legal demands, impacting more than twice as many accounts compared to the previous reporting period."

The report also found that 87 percent of those demands came from just two countries: Russia and Turkey. They aren't alone, however. Legal demands came from 38 different countries, including 99 demands for content removal from the United States. Twitter didn't comply with any of the U.S.'s demands.

Government information requests have also risen by 10 percent. The U.S. made the majority of them, requesting information 2,231 times on 9,226 Twitter accounts. Twitter complied with 76 percent of these requests.

Twitter does release information aside from these transparency reports. In October, the social platform released data sets that included 10 million election meddling tweets as well as information on its new rules regarding fake account removal.