Twitter says it removed over 6.5 million content in H1 2022

Twitter announced on Tuesday that it required users to remove a total of 6,586,109 pieces of content for violating its policies during the first six months of 2022, before it was acquired by Elon Musk for $44 billion in October. That marks a 29% growth from the second half of the previous year, the company said.

At the same time, the social media platform also took action against 5,096,272 accounts (up 20%), and suspended 1,618,855 accounts (up 28%) over violations of its rules.

The company announced that it received nearly 53,000 content removal requests from governments around the world during the first half, with Japan, South Korea, Turkey and India being the top requesters.

In addition, it said it received more than 16,000 government information requests for user data from more than 85 countries, with India, the US, France, Japan, and Germany being the top 5 countries.

While Twitter shared such reports on its Transparency Center twice a year before Musk’s acquisition, it announced the latest figures in a blog post instead. 

‘’We intend to share more about our path forward for transparency reporting later this year,’’ the company said. ‘’In the meantime, we will continue to give you insights into Twitter’s work to promote entertaining, informative and healthy conversation.‘’

The announcement came on the same day the European Union said that Twitter would be among 19 companies subject to the new EU online content rules, also known as the Digital Services Act, which requires them to publish annual transparency reports. 

Other tech companies include Meta-owned Facebook and Instagram, Alphabet’s Google Search, Google Maps, Google Shopping, Google Play and YouTube, Apple’s App Store, Microsoft’s LinkedIn and Bing, ByteDance’s TikTok, Snapchat, Pinterest, Amazon’s Marketplace, booking.com, Wikipedia, Zalando, and Alibaba’s AliExpress, all of which have more than 45 million active users in the European region.

The European Commission’s website states that non-compliance with the rules could lead to fines of up to 6% of the companies’ global revenue, or even a EU ban on their operations.