In the first half of 2022, before the social media site was taken over by billionaire Elon Musk, Twitter claimed it would ask users to remove over 6.5 million pieces of material, a 29% rise over the second half of 2021.
On the same day that the European Union announced that 19 tech companies would be subject to new historic rules requiring them to share data with authorities, do more to combat misinformation, and conduct external and independent auditing, Twitter revealed the number of content removals in a blog post.
According to the website of the European Commission, breaking the rules might result in penalties of up to 6% of worldwide sales or possibly a ban from doing business in the EU. These restrictions are among the tightest in the world for online platforms.
Twitter typically produced twice-yearly reports on its Transparency Center website, outlining details such as the number of accounts it banned and the amount of government requests it received for data, until Musk acquired Twitter in October and laid off around 80% of its workers.
In a brief blog post published on Tuesday, Twitter stated it will provide an update on its “path forward for transparency reporting” later in the year.
One of the obligations under the new internet regulations from the EU is the publication of transparency reports.
The business said that during the first half of 2022, it got 53,000 legal demands from governments to delete specific material, with Japan, South Korea, Turkey, and India filing the most requests.
The quantity of requests that Twitter cooperated with was not made public.
