Twitter said governments around the world made requests to remove content from a record number of user accounts between January and June last year, in data to be released by the social media company on Tuesday.

The platform said governments made 43,387 legal demands for the removal of content from 196,878 accounts in the six-month period, according to data in its latest transparency report seen by Reuters.

Twitter said this was the largest number of accounts ever targeted with government removal requests in a reporting period since the company started releasing transparency reports in 2012. It was also the largest number of government removal requests in a reporting period.

Ninety-five percent of these legal demands came from five countries, with the most coming from Japan, followed by Russia, Turkey, India, and South Korea, it said. The site is blocked in several countries including China and North Korea. – Reuters