Since Elon Musk bought the company, Twitter has complied with more than 80% of government and court requests to remove or moderate content, up from about 50% before it arrived, according to a report by Rest of World, at odds with the billionaire’s promises to limit political censorship. .
Highlights
- Of the 971 government requests Twitter has received since Mr. Musk took office six months ago, the company has fully complied with 808 of them and partially complied with 154, Rest of the World reports.
- The report uses information from the Lumen database, maintained by Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, which tracks online content removal requests. Twitter and other technology companies like Google and Wikipedia voluntarily share this data with Lumen.
- Twitter reported no response to the other nine requests, all of which relate to governments or courts asking to remove content or provide a user’s personal information, usually to help identify anonymous accounts.
- In the six months before Musk took over the company, Twitter said it had turned down three requests, five in the previous six months.
- The new numbers mark a sharp increase from the six months before Elon Musk took over the company, when Twitter responded to 280 out of 550 requests — about 51% of requests were fully satisfied, compared to 83% when Mr. Musk was the boss. company.
- The majority of recent requests have come from foreign governments, such as India, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Germany, all of which have tightened internet regulations in the past year, according to the report — and none from the United States.
- Forbes reached out to Twitter for comment and received an automated response with a “poo” emoji, which the company has been using to respond to press inquiries for at least a month.
main context
When Musk bought Twitter, he made it clear his intention was to improve freedom of speech and curb political bias, arguing that the platform was left-leaning. However, he has faced numerous controversies over freedom of expression, including allegations of censorship when dozens of tweets about a BBC documentary critical of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi were deleted in January at the request of the ministry. Indian Information. Twitter also suspended several accounts that tracked the billionaires’ private jets, including Musk’s. Upon taking office in October 2022, Musk said the reason he acquired Twitter was to provide a “general digital public space, where a wide range of beliefs can be discussed in a healthy way.” He provided internal emails to several journalists, who published them as “Twitter Files,” showing former Twitter executives’ communications with government officials on how to moderate various controversial topics. Elon Musk has also reinstated previously banned accounts, such as those of Donald Trump and Andrew Tate, and removed about 10% of Twitter’s workforce.
the shadow
While Twitter accepted a higher percentage of government requests over the past six months, information from the Lumen database shows an overall increase in requests — 971 over the past six months, 550 over the previous six months and 348 in the previous six months.
Translated article from the American magazine Forbes – Author: Catherine Hamilton
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