Twitter increases scope of its transparency reports as governments keep requesting more data

Twitter is getting more serious about its biannual transparency reports. The company today announced it’s expanding its reports’ scope with two new sections: trademark notices and the email privacy practices of several providers.

It’s also rolling out a redesign for its transparency hub, making it a bit easier on the eyes on mobile and simplifying access to reports for individual countries.

As for the most recent report itself, there are no huge surprises. Covering 2015 from January 1 to June 30, the trend of increasing government data requests continues.

Requests for account information rose by 52 percent over the last semester, which Twitter says is the greatest increase between reports its ever seen.

Requests around the world numbered at 4,363, from which Twitter released at least some information for 58 percent of them. The US makes up more than half of that number at 2,436 requests; Twitter released information for 80 percent of these.

In total, 12,711 accounts were affected by government requests, 6,324 of them in the US. Meanwhile, requests for data removal and copyright notices also increased by 26 and 11 percent, respectively.

For more specifics, you can read the transparency data yourself here.

If you don’t want to wait six months for the next transparency report, Twitter also points you to Chilling Effects, a repository for day-to day updates on the most recent government content takedown requests.

➤ Expanding the scope of our #Transparency Report [Twitter]