By Amanda Seitz
WASHINGTON (AP) --Twitter warned Thursday that governments around the globe are asking the company to remove content or snoop on private details of user accounts at an alarming rate.
The social media company revealed in a new report that it fielded a record number of legal demands — nearly 60,000 during a six-month period last year —- from local, state or national governments that wanted Twitter to remove content from accounts or reveal confidential information such as direct messages or user locations.
"We're seeing governments become more aggressive in how they try to use legal tactics to unmask the people using our service, collect information about account owners and also using legal demands as a way to try and silence people," Yoel Roth, the head of Twitter's safety and integrity, said in a conversation broadcast on the site Thursday.
The U.S. makes up the majority of demands for account information, accounting for 20% of the requests. India follows closely behind. Twitter says it complied fully with roughly 40% of all asks for information on user accounts.
Japan, which is also a frequent requestor for account information, makes the most requests of Twitter to take down content from accounts. Japan made more than 23,000 requests — half of all requests — for content to be removed. Russia followed closely behind on its takedown asks.
Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, also reported an increase in government asks for private user data during the same timeframe.
Twitter also reported a huge spike in requests from governments that targeted verified journalists and news outlets during the last half of 2021.
Governments also made a record number of legal demands on 349 accounts of verified journalists or news outlets around the globe between July and December of last year — a 103% increase.
Twitter did not provide a breakdown of which countries made those requests on journalists' accounts or how many of the asks they complied with.
Governments are using the social media companies to silence critics and censor journalists, Rob Mahoney, the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said in an emailed statement to The Associated Press.
"This surge in government demands for content takedowns and information on journalists is part of a global trend of increasing censorship and manipulation of information," Mahoney said. "Social media platforms are vital for reporters and they must do more to resist government attempts to silence critical voices."
Carrie Coon Relishes Being Part Of An Ensemble–From “The Gilded Age” To “His Three Daughters”
It can be hard to catch Carrie Coon on her own.
She is far more likely to be found in the thick of an ensemble. That could be on TV, in "The Gilded Age," for which she was just Emmy nominated, or in the upcoming season of "The White Lotus," which she recently shot in Thailand. Or it could be in films, most relevantly, Azazel Jacobs' new drama, "His Three Daughters," in which Coon stars alongside Natasha Lyonne and Elizabeth Olsen as sisters caring for their dying father.
But on a recent, bright late-summer morning, Coon is sitting on a bench in the bucolic northeast Westchester town of Pound Ridge. A few years back, she and her husband, the playwright Tracy Letts, moved near here with their two young children, drawn by the long rows of stone walls and a particularly good BLT from a nearby cafe that Letts, after biting into, declared must be within 15 miles of where they lived.
In a few days, they would both fly to Los Angeles for the Emmys (Letts was nominated for his performance in "Winning Time" ). But Coon, 43, was then largely enmeshed in the day-to-day life of raising a family, along with their nightly movie viewings, which Letts pulls from his extensive DVD collection. The previous night's choice: "Once Around," with Holly Hunter and Richard Dreyfus.
Coon met Letts during her breakthrough performance in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe?" on Broadway in 2012. She played the heavy-drinking housewife Honey. It was the first role that Coon read and knew, viscerally, she had to play. Immediately after saying this, Coon sighs.
"It sounds like something some diva would say in a movie from the '50s," Coon says. "I just walked around in my apartment in my slip and I had pearls and a little brandy. I made a grocery list and I just did... Read More