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Sarah Roach

and

Nat Rubio-Licht

July 29, 2022

In data, we give

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Good morning! Big Tech is bending over backwards to comply with other countries’ rules around sharing data. But the biggest number of data requests are coming from right here in the U.S.

Gimme, gimme, gimme user data

Governments worldwide are pressuring Big Tech to abide by rules that give other countries more oversight of user information. But Twitter revealed yesterday that most of the calls for data are coming from inside the house.

The U.S. is the global leader in government data requests from Twitter, the company wrote in its annual transparency report. Its information requests accounted for 20% of the global volume, ahead of India, Japan and France, in that order.

• The U.S. has led the world in data requests from Twitter every year since 2012. The second half of 2020, when it slid to the No. 2 spot, was the only exception.
• More broadly, the U.S. requests more data from across tech companies (Apple, Facebook and Twitter) than other countries, too.

At the same time, tech is under pressure from worldwide powers to meet certain requirements around content, as well as share user data. Human rights activists are concerned because it puts too much power in the hands of governments and risks privacy as a result.

• As my colleague Hirsh Chitkara wrote earlier this week, there’s a changing narrative that social media can’t stand for a “neutral” set of values any longer.
• Tech companies are complying with new rules in countries like Indonesia, India and Nigeria out of fear that they’ll be kicked out if they don’t. And many of those rules require companies to share user data and comply with other content moderation policies.

The Biden administration has expressed interest in pushing back against authoritarian uses of the internet globally, especially if it means a U.S. tech company runs the risk of being banned outright for not complying. But this country wants lots of information, too. It just has a different way of getting it.

— Sarah Roach