Twitter Compliance Report: Over 35K Accounts Suspended And 76 Grievances Processed

Twitter reported a total of 76 complaints, mainly dealing with abuse and harassment (24), defamation (11), hateful conduct (13), and misinformation or synthetic/manipulated media (7) between October 26 and November 25, 2021. 

Twitter took action against a total of 604 URLs. This number is higher than the number of grievances because each grievance may identify multiple items including different tweets and accounts.

The number of complaints is almost half of the number received between September 26 and October 25 in 2021, which itself was less than one-fifth of the total complaints received in the period preceding it. 

In India, Twitter users can complain about content on the platform using the grievance mechanism available via the Indian grievance officer (appointed by Twitter to comply with the new IT Rules). The platform does not require complainants to be registered on the platform in order to file a grievance. 

A majority of the grievances received by the grievance officer are related to issues including verification and account access and thereby doesn’t fall under the ambit of the grievance system. These requests have been excluded from the report.

Grievances Processed By Twitter

Twitter’s compliance report comes in line with Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, where social media platforms with more than 5 Mn users, are required to publish a monthly compliance report. It should include details of complaints from users via the India grievance mechanism as well as information about platforms’ proactive monitoring efforts.

Along with the above, the company also processed more than 70 grievances that were appealing Twitter account suspensions, but only five of them were overturned.

Social media platforms including Twitter takes many proactive measures to monitor content, especially for content promoting terrorism and child sexual abuse material (CSAM). The company monitors everything from media, text and illustrations on both the Twitter feed as well as in direct messages.

Towards that end, the company suspended over 35,583 accounts for CSAM, non-consensual nudity and related content, as well as 3,820 accounts for the promotion of terrorism.