MeitY Says Twitter Takedown Orders are Proportional to User Base

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MeitY Says Twitter Takedown Orders are Proportional to User Base
16 Jul 2022
6 min read

News Synopsis

According to an official review, India's orders for content blocking and takedowns issued to Twitter account for only 7% of the total legal demands received by the microblogging platform in the decade leading up to 2021 and are "proportional" to the company's growing user base in the country.

“India's 17,338 Legal demands between 2012 and 2021 account for 7% of the global legal demands (amounting) to 225,076 worldwide,” an internal report prepared by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) stated, while noting that Twitter has 2.36 crore users in India — its third largest user base globally.

“India is 7% of Twitter's global user base and so is the volume of removal requests, (from India),” according to the official analysis.

In comparison, Japan, which accounts for 18% of Twitter's global user base, has issued 32% of global legal demands, while South Korea has issued 5% of removal requests despite having a 2% user base," according to the report.
This latest analysis comes as Twitter and the Central Government are at odds over the rise in official demands for account takedowns and blocking. Earlier this month, the social media platform filed a petition with the Karnataka High Court to overturn at least 39 such blocking orders issued by the union IT ministry.