India has highest no. of govt requests for account info: Twitter

New Delhi: India was the single largest source of government requests for account information that Twitter received during the July-December 2020 period, accounting for 25 per cent of the global volume, the microblogging platform said on Wednesday.

This is the first time since Twitter started publishing its transparency report in 2012 where the US is not the top global requester, the company said. A total of 14,561 government requests were received globally, which includes 12,109 routine and 2,452 emergency requests in the second half of 2020. India accounted for 3,615 requests (3,463 routine requests and 152 emergency requests) in the same time frame.

Twitter brings out with a biannual transparency report where it shares details on the number of government and legal requests, removal requests and data around accounts actioned for various violations and breach of rules.

India also ranked second in terms of volume of legal demands for content removal, after Japan, Twitter said in a blog that provided an update to its transparency report.

Twitter — which has an estimated 1.75 crore users in India — recently appointed a Resident Grievance Officer, days after it designated a Chief Compliance Officer, and also released its first India Transparency Report on Sunday to comply with the new IT rules.

In its blog on Wednesday, Twitter said it produced some or all of the requested information in response to 30 per cent of the global information requests by governments in July-December 2020 period.

"India is the single largest source of government information requests, accounting for 25 per cent of the global volume and 15 per cent of the global accounts specified. The second highest volume of information requests originated from the US, comprising 22 per cent of global information requests, it added.

Japan (17 per cent) and France (14 per cent) followed in the list. Combined, these four countries accounted for 78 per cent of all global information requests during this reporting period, it said.

Twitter received 1,096 (46 per cent) more routine requests from India, while the number of accounts specified increased by 1,602 (27 per cent) during the reporting period over January-June 2020, it added.