Topline
Twitter has fully complied with more than 80% of government and courts’ requests to remove or alter content since Elon Musk bought the company, up from around 50% before he took over, according to a report from the technology publication Rest of World, reflecting a discordance with the billionaire’s promises to limit political censorship.
Elon Musk on his first day owning Twitter.
Key Facts
Of the 971 government requests Twitter has received since Musk took over six months ago, the company has fully complied with 808 of them and partially complied with 154, according to Rest of World’s report.
The report uses information from the Lumen database, run by Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center For Internet & Society, which tracks online content removal requests—Twitter and other tech companies like Google and Wikipedia voluntarily share this data with Lumen.
Twitter did not report any response to the remaining nine requests, all of which involve governments or courts asking to remove content or provide personal information about a user, usually to help identify anonymous accounts.
In the six months before Musk bought the company, Twitter reported rejecting three requests, and in the six months before that, it rejected five.
The new numbers mark a steep increase from the six months before Musk bought the company, when Twitter fully complied with 280 out of 550 requests—about 51% of requests were fully complied with, compared with 83% while Musk headed the firm.
The majority of recent requests have come from foreign governments, such as India, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Germany, all of which have increased internet regulations in the past year, according to the report—none came from the U.S.
Forbes reached out to Twitter for comment, and received an automated poop emoji, which the company has been using to respond to press requests for at least a month.
Key Background
When Musk bought Twitter, he made clear his intention was to improve free speech and limit political bias, arguing the platform had a left-leaning skew. However, he’s faced several controversies regarding free speech, including censorship allegations when dozens of Tweets about a BBC documentary critiquing India Prime Minister Narendra Modi were taken down in January after requests from India’s information ministry. Twitter has also suspended several accounts that were tracking billionaires’ private jets, including Musk’s. Upon taking over in October 2022, Musk said his reason for acquiring Twitter was to provide “a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner.” He provided internal emails to several journalists, who published them as the “Twitter Files,” showing former Twitter executives’ communications with government officials about how to moderate various controversial topics. Musk has also reinstated previously banned accounts, like those of Donald Trump and Andrew Tate, and cut roughly 10% of Twitter’s workforce.
Tangent
While Twitter has accepted a larger percentage of government requests in the past six months, the Lumen database information shows an overall increase in requests—971 in the past six months, 550 in the six months before that and 348 in the six months before that.
Further Reading
Twitter is complying with more government demands under Elon Musk (Rest of World)
Twitter Inc. ‘No Longer Exists’ As Elon Musk Inches Closer To X ‘Everything App’ Ambitions (Forbes)
Musk Says Twitter Is Willing To Address Advertiser Concerns But ‘Freedom Of Speech Is Paramount’ (Forbes)
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/katherinehamilton/2023/04/27/twitter-has-complied-with-almost-every-government-request-for-censorship-since-musk-took-over-report-finds/