Twitter Bans Over 39K Accounts For Terrorism, Child Abuse-Related Content

Twitter received 795 user complaints between February 26, 2022 and March 25, 2022, the microblogging site said in its monthly compliance report released under India’s IT Rules, 2021. 

Most of the grievances pertained to online harassment (606), followed by sensitive adult content (174), hateful conduct (57), privacy infringement (56), manipulated media (24), among others. 

Based on these complaints, a total of 924 URLs were taken down. These included 591 URLs for online harassment, 50 for sensitive adult content, 42 for hateful conduct, 35 for IP-related infringement, 23 URLs for manipulated media, among others.

In contrast, Twitter had received 268 complaints between January 26, 2022 and February 25, 2022. Most of the complaints related to online harassment and impersonation. The US-based social media giant had blocked 638 URLs during this period.

In its latest report, Twitter said it processed 44 grievances related to account suspension. Based on these requests, 2 suspensions were revoked, while the rest continue to remain suspended.

Twitter also cracked the whip on content pieces related to child sexual exploitation and promotion of terrorism on its platform. The social media giant claims to sweep everything from media and text to illustrations to highlight any such instances of illegal activities.

As part of this, Twitter banned 35,491 accounts for posting content related to non-consensual nudity, child exploitation and related content. In addition, it also blocked 4,097 accounts for tweeting content promoting terrorism.

In its last compliance report, Twitter had said it banned more than 34,000 accounts for posting content related to non-consensual nudity, child exploitation and terrorism.

Meanwhile, Meta also released its monthly transparency report for Facebook and Instagram. The social media giant said that Facebook took action against 21.58 Mn pieces of content on the platform in March this year. Instagram also took action against 2.73 Mn content pieces on its platform.

Another Meta-owned platform, WhatsApp, also banned.1.8 Mn accounts in March 2022.

Additionally, Google India received 31.6K user complaints in March this year. Homegrown content sharing platform ShareChat received 7 Mn user complaints in March this year.

In accordance with the new IT Rules, 2021, all social media platforms with more than 5 Mn users are mandated to publish monthly transparency reports.