Twitter’s transparency report covering the second half of 2012 was just released, highlighting requests the microblogging platform receives from governments and rights holders. Specifically, the report covers information requests from governments, government requests for content removal and copyright notices related to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
For the second half of 2012, Twitter received 1,009 information requests and 42 requests for removal from government agencies. During the same period, they also received 3,268 copyright takedown notices and counter notices.
When looking at specific information requests, we find that the United States led all other countries with 815 requests. The next highest request count belongs to Japan with 62 followed by Brazil with 34.
The company released a similar update back in July to highlight Q1+Q2 2012 data. For comparison purposes, Twitter reported at the time that they received 849 information requests, just six removal requests and 3,378 copyright / counter notices. The only real change between the first and second half of the year was with removal requests as they increased sevenfold.
For the full year, Twitter says they withheld 10,832 tweets and requests affecting 13,079 users. Of course, the company doesn’t always comply with requests from copyright owners. In fact, only about 45 percent of takedown requests are deemed valid and result in content being removed from Twitter.
Twitter also unveiled a new website to host transparency reports for the long run, similar to the one that Google maintains. It can be found by visiting transparency.twitter.com.
