Following other major social networks and online platforms like Twitter and Dropbox, Snapchat has gone and released its first ever transparency report on government requests for user data.
The data only covers a four-month period starting in November, but still provides some insight on how much information different governments are looking for.
As usual, the US had by far the most requests: 375 out of 403. Snapchat produced some information for 92% of these requests.
Other countries yielded 28 requests, for which information was produced for just 21% of them. The UK, France and Canada had the most of these, at 10, 9 and 3, respectively. The report also tracks government content removal requests and DMCA takedowns, but there were none in the time accounted for.
While it’s hard to quantify the the significance of the number of requests, it’s interesting to consider what information governments may glean from perusing into Snapchat accounts. Unlike Facebook or Twitter, the images stored on the platform are temporary, and there isn’t much in the way of user profiles. Dropbox, by comparison, only receive 275 data requests in its most recent report covering 6 months.
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Snapchat will release its first full transparency report in July, and they will be released twice a year from there on.
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