Twitter releases Q3-Q4 2012 transparency report

Twitter released its second transparency report, and this one focuses on the second half of 2012, while the first report focused on the first half. The report highlights the number of information requests, government removal requests, and copyright takedown notices that Twitter received throughout the year. In total, the social media service received 1,858 information requests, 46 removal requests by the government, and a whopping 6,646 copyright takedown notices.

As opposed to the first two quarters of 2012, the number of information requests has gone up to 1,009 from 849, while the number of government removal requests have jumped 600% from the first half of the year — granted it jumped to 42 from a lowly 6. As for copyright takedown notices, Twitter actually saw a 3% decrease in that area.

In total, Twitter withheld 10,832 tweets in 2012, and various requests affected 13,079 users. However, Twitter doesn't comply with every request. Out of the several thousands of copyright takedown requests, Twitterthe company removed around 45.3% of them. So, while the company gets many takedown requests, they don't exactly take care of all of them.

In the blog post that Twitter posted up today, the company says that it has been "thinking about ways in which we can more effectively share this information, with an aim to make it more meaningful and accessible to the community at large." They reiterated that it's important to be transparent to its users about various notices.