Twitter has claimed to suspend over 125,000 ISIS accounts for promoting terrorist acts through its site since mid-2015. The majority of the accounts were said to be linked to extremist groups such as Isis, al-Qaeda and the Islamist Syrian milita the al-Nusra front. Some of the deleted accounts were manned by real users while others were “bots” set up to robotically tweet out extremist propaganda.
Twitter says it has increased the size of its team that reviews reports. Apart from monitoring accounts similar to those that have been reported, it launched spam-fighting tools to uncover violating accounts for further review.
It added that : “We condemn the use of Twitter to promote terrorism and the Twitter Rules make it clear that this type of behavior, or any violent threat, is not permitted on our service”.
Since mid-2015, we have suspended over 125,000 accounts for threatening or promoting terrorist acts. Read more here: https://t.co/FQJeOTtPLz
— Policy (@policy) February 5, 2016
“Like most people around the world, we are horrified by the atrocities perpetrated by extremist groups”, Twitter said in a statement. Twitter is also cooperating with the law enforcement agencies like the FBI and organizations working to counter extremist content online.