India tops list of nations seeking blocking tweets by journalists, news outlets: Twitter report

In its latest transparency report, Twitter said India had submitted 114 demands between July to December 2021 to block tweets posted by verified accounts of scribes and news companies

India made the highest number of legal demands globally to remove content posted by verified journalists and news outlets on Twitter during July-December 2021, the microblogging platform said.

In its latest transparency report, Twitter said India was only behind the U.S. in seeking Twitter account information, accounting for 19% of global information requests.

It was among the top five countries to issue content-blocking orders to Twitter during July-December 2021 for all kinds of users.

Twitter said 349 accounts of verified journalists and news outlets located around the world were subject to 326 legal demands to remove content, a 103% increase in the number of accounts since the previous period (January-June 2021).

"This spike is largely attributed to legal demands submitted by India (114), Turkey (78), Russia (55), and Pakistan (48)," it said.

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India had topped this list for January-June 2021 as well. In that timeframe, India had made 89 of the total 231 such demands the platform received globally.