The Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization behind Wikipedia, released its first ever transparency report today, claiming it had granted zero of the 304 general content removal requests it had received during the past two years.
The largest share of Wikimedia’s content removal requests were split between the U.S. (with 54) and Germany (with 50).
Wikimedia says it granted 14.3 percent of the user data requests it received, noting that 28 user data requests were informal non-government requests, 15 informal government requests, 8 civil subpoenas and 5 criminal subpoenas.
In regards to user data, Wikimedia claimed:
We do all we can to protect our users’ rights and privacy. Only 14.3% of requests for user data were granted because many requests were found to be illegal or not up to our standards. And often, we did not have any information to give.
According to the report, when legally forced to provide user data, Wikimedia will alert the affected user if permitted, and has the means to do so, before releasing user data information.
While it did not comply with any general content removal requests, Wikimedia did grant 41 percent of the 58 DMCA takedown requests filed with the site between July of 2012 and June of this year.
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