Twitter & Facebook: A Study in Bias

Share on facebook
Facebook
Share on twitter
Twitter
Share on linkedin
LinkedIn
Share on whatsapp
WhatsApp

Overview

Social media giants, Facebook and Twitter, receive thousands of requests from governments for user data, account information and legal action against certain individuals. However, their compliance with these request shows discrepancies, where the US and other Western countries have the highest compliance rate and the framework to deal with social media platforms through local offices. The difference in compliance rates of Twitter and Facebook and their reluctance to open local offices in countries like Pakistan shows an inherent bias in how they deal with governments around the world.

Methodology

For the study, we analyze the data provided by Facebook and Twitter to examine the number of government information requests, accounts specified, and the corresponding compliance rate for these requests originating from specific countries.

Twitter Compliance

Twitter Compliance rate is highest with Western countries and the US. Twitter has 0% compliance rate with Pakistan and several other countries.

United States has highest Twitter Compliance rate of 74% in the world. Almost 50% of twitter account information requests come from two countries, The Unites States and The United Kingdom.

A comparison between Pakistan and India shows that India made almost 7% of global Information requests while Pakistan made less than 1%. Twitter Compliance with India was 8% while no request from Pakistan was processed.

Twitter Compliance rate is higher in countries where it has local offices and a framework to comply with local laws and regulations.

Facebook Compliance

Facebook has highest compliance rate with the United States, while compliance with Pakistan is less than that for India and Bangladesh.

Facebook compliance rate of 89% with the United States is highest in the world.              

Out of 1816 requests for data from Pakistan, Facebook only processed 21% of those requests. However, out of 40,300 requests for data from India, Facebook processed more than 52% requests – that is, 21000 requests were processed.


Download PDF:

Twitter & Facebook: A Study in Bias

Share on facebook
Facebook
Share on twitter
Twitter
Share on linkedin
LinkedIn
Share on whatsapp
WhatsApp