By Elizabeth Culliford

(Reuters) – Twitter (NYSE) announced that governments from all over the globe requested the removal of content from a record-breaking number user accounts last January through June 2013. The data will be made public by the social media giant on Tuesday.

According to data in its most recent transparency reports, Reuters found that 43,387 government demands were made for content removal from 196 878 accounts.

Twitter claimed that this is the highest number of government requests for removal in any reporting period since 2012. This was the highest number of requests for government removals in any reporting period.

According to the report, ninety five percent of legal demands originated from five different countries. Japan was responsible for most, followed closely by Turkey and India. The site has been blocked by several countries, including China.

Twitter stated that it “withheld” content from certain countries, or requested account holders to delete some or all of the content reported in its response to 54% global legal requirements.

Sinead McSweeney (Vice President of Global Public Policy and Philanthropy at Twitter) stated in a statement that they are facing “unprecedented challenges” as countries around the world try to remove and intervene content. This threat to privacy is alarming and requires all our attention.

Global regulators and governments continue to scrutinize major social media platforms for the content they permit on their sites. Twitter, which has been involved in high-profile disputes with Indian and Nigerian governments over regulation of content moderation, has had a difficult year.

Twitter, like other companies such as Google (NASDAQ) and Facebook (NASDAQ), has been criticised in America and elsewhere for its handling of misinformation and violence on its platforms.

According to data, the number of legal requests mentioning accounts was almost half as high as the 131,933 accounts in the preceding six-months. Twitter stated that 14% more government removal requests were received than 38,524 at the end of the reporting period. This was an increase of 2.8% over last year.

Although the company stated this summer it experienced a spike in requests from governments worldwide to remove content published by news organizations in 2020, the company claimed that there was a decrease in accounts which were subject to these requests at 14%.

According to the report, requests by governments for Twitter account information preservation were at a record low of about 4% compared with previous reporting periods. According to the report, 57% of all these requests came from the United States. The United States also accounted for the most government information requests.