On the same day that a New York court decision requiring Twitter to produce user information went public, the company released its first ever Transparency Report. Going forward, this report will be issued on a biannual basis.
The report provided a breakdown of requests for user information and content, by country, and compared the number of requests made by each nation and the percentage of queries honored by Twitter. The report also provided information on government requests for takedown notices made pursuant to the DMCA. These notices constitute the largest portion of requests submitted to Twitter.
The United States was by far the most active requestor of information and content. Yet keep in mind the number of U.S. Twitter subscribers dwarfs other nations’.
Numbers of note:
679: U.S. government requests for information.
98: Japanese government requests for information—second only to the U.S.
75: The percentage of U.S. information requests honored by Twitter.
50: The second highest percentage of information requests honored. Silver medal recipient. . . the Netherlands.
33: Australia and Greece tied for third in percentage of information requests honored.
20: Although coming in fifth for information requests honored by Twitter, Japan made the second highest number of information requests: 147 in total.
16: The number of countries from whom Twitter received and ignored information requests, including Brazil, Germany, and Italy.
11-12: The number of information requests made by Canada and Spain (12 each) and the United Kingdom (11).
0: The number of Tweets that Twitter removed (other than copyright takedowns). Requests came from Pakistan, Turkey, France, Greece and the U.K.
The number of requests for Twitter information seems to be on the rise. Twitter received more government requests in the first half of 2012 than it did in all of 2011. Stay tuned to see whether requests for user information expands or contracts in the age of Twitter-verse transparency.
