Turkish Authorities Top For Twitter Censorship

Twitter has evolved to become an important outlet for political discussion, debate and commentary. The platform was notably put to use to successfully organize anti-government protests on numerous occasions. This put some world leaders on edge, unsurprisingly leading to some countries clamping down on the network's content. Twitter's latest transparency report shows the number of content removal requests made by different countries as well as the share that were granted.

In the first six months of 2017, Turkey was the most controlling of Twitter content, making nearly 2,000 removal requests between January 01 and June 30. 11 percent of those requests were granted to some extent. Turkish authorities detained thousands of people after last July's failed coup with President Tayyip Erdogan clamping down on what he percieves as illegal online activity for years. Russia also has a long history of attempting to silence Putin critics and it comes second, making a total of 1,213 removal requests up to June 30th. In the first six months of the year, 90 percent of all removal requests came from just four countries - Turkey, Russia, France and Germany.