Twitter bans 43,140 accounts of Indian users

Twitter banned 43,140 accounts of Indian users in June over violation of its guidelines, the microblogging platform said in its July 2022 compliance report.

According to the report, Twitter removed 40,982 accounts for child sexual exploitation, non-consensual nudity, and similar content, while 2,158 accounts were banned for promoting terrorism. The platform received 724 grievances in India though its local grievance mechanism between May 26, 2022 and June 25, 2022 and total number of URLs actioned was 122.

The highest number of complaints—536 were related to abuse/harassment and 134 against hateful conduct.

Twitter also processed 52 grievances which appealed account suspensions and none were overturned, and all accounts remain suspended, the report said. The social media platform also received two requests related to general questions about Twitter accounts during this reporting period.

“A vast majority of all accounts that are suspended for the promotion of terrorism and child sexual exploitation are proactively flagged by a combination of technology and other purpose-built internal proprietary tools,” company said in the report.

All big digital and social media platforms, with more than five million users are required to publish a monthly compliance report under the new IT Rules 2021.

In compliance with Rule 4(1)(d) of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, Twitter is required to publish a monthly compliance report which includes the details of complaints from users via the India grievance mechanism and action taken on them, as well as information related to Twitter’s proactive monitoring efforts under the IT Rules.

Last month, the micro-blogging website had complied with the IT ministry’s notice to comply with the new IT Rules 2021 by July 4 deadline, or lose its immunity as a social media intermediary under Section 79 of the IT Act. The government had asked Twitter to act on the content take-down notices sent under Section 69A of the IT Act along with non-compliance notices issued for not taking the content down. In May, the IT ministry issued a similar notice to Twitter, directing it to appoint a resident grievance officer, a resident chief compliance officer, and a nodal contact person. Financial Express