Twitter Publishes Transparency Report on Government User Data Requests

Hot on the trails of Google's latest Transparency Report, Twitter is creating a tradition and is unveiling its second such report, covering the last half of 2012. Twitter only started reporting on user data and censorship requests six months ago, but the company plans to make it a habit.

There's also a website now where you'll find the latest data from Twitter. Revealing the data today is no coincidence as January 28 is celebrated as Data Privacy Day. Google has also provided more information on these requests earlier today.

"We’ve 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. In celebration of #DataPrivacyDay, today, we’re rolling out a new home for our transparency report: transparency.twitter.com," Twitter explained.

One thing that is immediately noticeable when looking at Twitter's data is that it gets significantly less requests than Google, orders of magnitude fewer when it comes to copyright takedowns. It's understandable since Twitter, as big as it is, can't compare to all of Google's sites and services put together.

However, when it comes to government requests, the gap is narrower – Google got some 40,000 user data requests in 2012, compared to Twitter's 1,800.