News Technology Why did Twitter remove 46,000 user accounts from India?

Why did Twitter remove 46,000 user accounts from India?

Twitter has removed around 43,656 accounts for non-consensual nudity, child sexual exploitation and similar content, while 2,870 accounts were banned for promoting terrorism.

Twitter Image Source : FREEPIKWhy did Twitter remove 46,000 user accounts from India? 

Twitter has reportedly banned around 46,000+ accounts of Indian users in the month of May 2022. The action was taken due to the over violation of its guidelines, as stated by the micro blogging platform.

As per the report, Twitter removed 43,656 accounts for non-consensual nudity, child sexual exploitation and similar content, while 2,870 accounts were banned for promoting terrorism.

The platform further received around 1,698 complaints in India through the local grievance mechanism of Twitter, between April 26, 2022 and May 25, 2022.

This includes complaints pertained to:

  • Online abuse/harassment (1,366), 
  • hateful conduct (111), 
  • misinformation and manipulated media (36), 
  • sensitive adult content (28), 
  • impersonation (25), among others.

Furthermore it took action against 1,621 uniform resource locators (URLs) during the period, which includes URLs for violating norms related to online harassment (1,077), hateful conduct (362), and sensitive adult content (154).

Also, Twitter has processed around 115 grievances which appealed account suspensions. No account suspensions were revoked, the report said.

In a report Twitter stated: "While we welcome everyone to express themselves on our platform, we do not tolerate behaviour that harasses, threatens, dehumanises, or uses fear to silence the voices of others.”

Meanwhile, Google India purged 393,303 pieces of bad content in May via automated detection to prevent dissemination of harmful content such as child sexual abuse and violent extremist content, according to its monthly transparency report on Sunday.

The tech giant also removed 62,673 pieces of content as a result of user complaints in May.

On Friday, Meta-owned WhatsApp also announced that it banned over 19 lakh bad accounts in India in the month of May in compliance with the new IT Rules 2021.

The platform had banned over 16.6 lakh bad accounts in India in April.

The company also received 528 grievance reports in May within the country, and the accounts "actioned" were 24.

In April, WhatsApp received 844 grievance reports within the country, and the accounts "actioned" were 123.

Under the new IT Rules 2021, big digital and social media platforms, with more than 5 million users, have to publish monthly compliance reports.

Inputs from IANS