Twitter turns down Russia’s requests to block undesirable information


In the period of July 1 – December 31, 2014 Twitter denied several requests to silence popular critics of the Russian government and other demands to limit speech about non-violent demonstrations in Ukraine, the report issued on February, 9 says.

Governments generally make removal requests for content that may be illegal in their respective jurisdictions.

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Over the last six months Twitter has received 84% more removal requests impacting 348% more accounts since the previous reporting period. The majority of these requests came from Turkey (477), Russia (91), and Germany (43) resulting in the collective withholding of 79 accounts and 1,835 Tweets. Overall, 85 accounts and 1,982 Tweets were withheld in various countries around the world.

Since the last report Twitter team received 184% more requests from Russia; it complied with 13% of them.

“We received one court order and 89 requests from the Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom, Information Technologies and Mass Communications (Roskomnadzor). The increasing volume of requests made by Russia include those issued under the authority of Federal Law 398. This law allows Russian authorities to restrict access to content that is deemed to be “extremist” or that leads to ‘mass actions’. We denied several requests to silence popular critics of the Russian government and other demands to limit speech about non-violent demonstrations in Ukraine,” the report reads.

Belarus is not on the list of the coutries that sent such requests.

www.belsat.eu/en

TWITTER