Twitter updates Transparency Center with new data

Twitter mentions as it is navigating through the pandemic and concerted attempts by governments around the world to limit access to Twitter, the latest update to the Transparency Center will provide more insights through new data points.

The Twitter Transparency Report offers a look into the platform's work to uphold its rules and policies, government requests, and more, the updated Transparency Center includes data on the recurring categories, new impressions metric for violative Tweets, along with information on the adoption of two-factor authentication. Approximately 2.3% of accounts have enabled at least one 2FA method during the reporting period.

The platform also mentions the disruptions caused by COVID-19 may reflect in some of the data shared in the latest report including data from July 1 to December 31, 2020. Varying region-specific COVID-19 restrictions, increased dependence on automation, affected efficiency of content moderation, have been a few of the disruptions caused by the pandemic.

Impressions

Misleading information and fake news have a tendency to spread at an accelerated rate, often faster than credible information, in such cases, there is a higher chance of the damage already being done and the piece of content triggering real-world consequences.

To gauge a sense of consequences such content may or may not have, this new impressions metric captures the number of views a violative Tweet received prior to removal. Twitter shares in total, impressions on violative Tweets accounted for less than 0.1% of all impressions for all Tweets globally, from July 1 through December 31.

During this time period, Twitter removed 3.8 Mn Tweets that violated the Twitter Rules; 77% of which received fewer than 100 impressions prior to removal, with an additional 17% receiving between 100 and 1,000 impressions. Only 6% of removed Tweets had more than 1,000 impressions.

COVID-19

Misleading information around COVID-19 has posed a grave challenge to social media platforms since the beginning of the pandemic. Twitter has also shared an update on their work on this front.

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Twitter suspended 597 accounts and removed 3,846 pieces of content. Since introducing COVID-19 guidance last year, from the time the report was published on Twitter's blog, the platform challenged 11.7 Mn accounts, suspended 1,496 accounts, and removed over 43,010 pieces of content worldwide.

Global Legal Requests

Governments around the world frequently present information or removal requests to Twitter, the platform shares it produced some or all of the requested information in response to 30% of the information requests; 4,367 total, and shares a few more data points.

Information Requests

• India is the single largest source of government information requests, accounting for 25% of the global volume and 15% of the global accounts specified
• The second highest volume of information requests originated from United States, comprising 22% of global information requests
• The United States submitted the highest volume of global emergency requests (34%), followed by Japan (17%), and South Korea (16%)

Removal Requests

Note: When content is withheld, it is only withheld in the country making the removal demand and remains visible in all other jurisdictions.

• Accounts of 199 verified journalists and news outlets from around the world were subject to 361 legal demands, a 26% increase in these requests since the previous reporting period
• 94% of the total global volume of legal demands originated from only five countries (in decreasing order): Japan, India, Russia, Turkey, and South Korea
• Twitter received 38,524 legal demands to remove content specifying 131,933 accounts
• The platform withheld or otherwise removed some or all of the reported content in response to 29% of these global legal demands; 11,091 total
• There was a 9% decrease in the number of legal demands Twitter received, compared to the previous reporting period, although these requests sought removal of content from the largest number of accounts ever in a single reporting period

Twitter will also provide a copy of the request to the publicly available Lumen Database.