Twitter has banned as many as 44,611 accounts in India between September 26 and October 25, in line with the country’s new information technology rules, the microblogging platform said in its monthly compliance report on Thursday. The accounts were banned for promoting child sexual exploitation and non-consensual nudity amongst others. Meanwhile, as many as 4,014 accounts were banned for promoting terrorism.
Notably, between the August 25 and September 26 period, the company banned as many as 52,141 such accounts. The social media platform said that it received 582 complaints in its grievances redressal mechanisms pertaining to abuse and harassment. Of which actions have been taken against 20 URLs.
Moreover, it received 7 complaints pertaining to sensitive adult content on the social media platform, of which actions have been taken against 6 URLs.
However, no actions have been taken against eight complaints pertaining to defamation, 38 complaints pertaining to hateful conduct, 85 complaints regarding IP-related infringement, and three complaints related to privacy infringement.
“We processed 61 grievances which were appealing Twitter account suspensions. These were all resolved and the appropriate responses were sent. We overturned none of these account suspensions after reviewing the specifics of the situation. All accounts remain suspended. We also received 12 requests related to general questions about Twitter accounts during this reporting period,” the social media platform said in a statement.
Meanwhile, the social media platform has also ended its Covid-19 misinformation policy with effect from November 23. The company introduced the policy in 2020 for suspending accounts that post false or misleading health-related information regarding Covid-19. In September, the social media platform said that more than 11,000 Twitter accounts were banned during the month for violating the policy. Last month, Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk said the hate speech impressions on Twitter have declined by one-third from pre-spike levels. Musk hinted he is planning to provide amnesty to the suspended accounts.
The report comes on the heels of Musk suggesting a slew of measures for Twitter 2.0. Ever since he acquired the microblogging platform, Musk claims he has been on a mission to make Twitter the most accurate source of information. Following his takeover of the social platform, he introduced a content moderation council but blamed a large coalition of political/social activist groups for breaking the deal for the moderation council.
In order to curtail the prevalence of fake accounts, Musk plans to introduce a new verification system this month. The Twitter Blue Tick subscription was slated to be rolled out in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK for $8 every month beginning November. Musk had said the subscription cost will be utilised to ramp up the social media platform’s dampening revenue. However, for now, Musk has put an indefinite hold on its launch, saying the pause will be in effect until there is high confidence in stopping impersonation.