India Has 7 Per Cent of Twitters Global User Base And So Is Its Share In Content Removal Requests Report

New Delhi: India’s share in Twitter’s global user base accounts to 7%, which is also proportional to the requests it makes to the microblogging site for the removal of content and taking down posts. A report released by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) revealed that even though India’s share in Twitter’s user base is increasing, it is also one of the major requesters in content regulation on the site.Also Read – Twitter Begins Testing New Custom-Built Timelines | Details Here

The development comes in the wake of the face-off between Twitter and the Central government in the recent past. Earlier this month, the social media platform approached the Karnataka High Court challenging at least 39 orders to block content issued by the union IT ministry. Also Read – Twitter Down As Major Outage Reported Across Globe; Users Unable To Access, Post Tweets

India’s 17,338 Legal demands between 2012 and 2021 account for 7% of the global legal demands amidst 225,076 demands that the site received worldwide, the internal report prepared by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology stated. It is also to be noted that Twitter has 2.36 crore users in India- being the country with third largest user base globally, reported Economic Times. Also Read – Microsoft Cuts 1,800 Jobs as Part of ‘Realignment’, Twitter Lays Off 30% Staff From Recruiting Team

India Among Top Five Requesters On Content Removal

During the first six months of 2021, 95% of the total legal demands directed at Twitter came from five countries, namely, Japan, Russia, Turkey, India and South Korea. India had accounted for 11% of global legal demands for content takedown during Jan-June 2021,which is down from 18% in the previous period.

Despite being a high requester for content regulation, the ministry’s report reveals that content takedown orders issued by India are “not as high” when viewed from a global context. Union Ministry claims that its takedown requests are in line with the rise of internet consumption in the country. On the other hand, as reported by Economic Times, cybersecurity firms rank the total number of legal demands made by India to social media and other platforms on the second place, just below Russia.

India dropped from being on the second place to the fourth place in submitting requests for content regulation. The report notes that the drop is despite the disparity in the size of the top four countries in terms of population and Twitter users. It even draws from Google’s data on content removal and noted that India was “never out of line” with the global trends when it came to giving orders for content removal.

The ministry’s analysis labelled these orders as “necessary to prevent apocalypse” as more users mean “rampant rise in malicious posting with implications for national security, law and order and threat to country’s citizens”.

Among other countries, Japan accounts for 18% of Twitter’s global user base and shares 32% of global legal demands, while South Korea has issued 5% of removal requests with just a 2% user base,” as per the Ministry’s report.