Twitter Received 1,088 Complaints In India In Aug; Suspended Over 60K Accounts

Microblogging platform Twitter received 1,088 complaints from individual users in India between July 26 and August 25 via its grievance redressal mechanisms. Out of the 1,088 complaints, the tech giant took action against 41 URLs, according to its monthly compliance report. 

In comparison, Twitter had received 1,253 complaints during June 26-July 25, 2022 period, while it took down 138 URLs for violating its community guidelines during the period.

In its latest reports, Twitter said it acted upon 76 complaints from Indian users appealing account suspensions on the platform. However, it overturned none of these account suspensions.

It also received 15 requests asking general questions about Twitter accounts during the reporting time period, as per the report.

Indian users complained the most about online abuse and harassment (544) and hateful conduct (502), followed by alleged impersonation (17), copyright infringement (11), sensitive adult content (12) and manipulated content (2).  

In addition, Twitter said it banned 60,231 accounts for promoting terrorism and child sexual exploitation. Of this, 57,643 accounts were banned for promoting child sexual exploitation, non-consensual nudity and allied content, while 2,588 accounts were banned for promoting terrorism.

The accounts were banned under Twitter’s proactive monitoring. Proactive monitoring refers to content proactively identified by using internal proprietary tools and industry hash sharing initiatives. 

As per the IT Rules, 2021, social media platforms with more than 5 Mn users in India need to publish monthly compliance reports. Twitter, along with others like Meta and Google, has been publishing compliance reports every month since the law came into effect.

In its compliance report for August, Meta said it acted upon 19 Mn+ complaints from Facebook users, while Google removed 1.38 Lakh content pieces on the basis of user complaints.