Twitter has reported a massive spike in government requests for users' information and requests to remove tweets from its service.

According to the microblogging company's latest transparency report, from July to December 2014 government requests for specific users' data rose by 40% on the previous six months to about 2,871.

The requests came from more than 50 countries. Twitter said it was getting more requests from countries around the world but three countries stood out: Russia, Turkey and the US.

In the same period Twitter received an 84% increase in government and government-sanctioned demands to remove content from its service. Turkey asked for the most removals, making 477 requests. Twitter has repeatedly clashed with the Turkish government and was briefly banned in the country last year, after people used the service to implicate the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and others in corruption allegations ahead of local elections.