Twitter has announced the suspension of 235 000 new terrorist related accounts. Earlier this year, it announced that it had suspended more than 125,000 accounts since mid-2015 for violating our longtime prohibition on violent threats and the promotion of terrorism and shared the steps we are taking as a company to combat this content.
Since mid-2015, we have suspended over 125,000 accounts for threatening or promoting terrorist acts. Read more here: https://t.co/FQJeOTtPLz
— Twitter Public Policy (@Policy) February 5, 2016
This brings the overall number of suspensions to 360,000 since the middle of 2015.
It also stated in its blog that “Daily suspensions are up over 80 percent since last year, with spikes in suspensions immediately following terrorist attacks. Our response time for suspending reported accounts, the amount of time these accounts are on Twitter, and the number of followers they accumulate have all decreased dramatically. We have also made progress in disrupting the ability of those suspended to immediately return to the platform. We have expanded the teams that review reports around the clock, along with their tools and language capabilities. We also collaborate with other social platforms, sharing information and best practices for identifying terrorist content.”
Recently, Twitter suspended the account of the Niger Delta Avengers, a terrorist group operating in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria.
It mentioned that even though it noted that there is no “magic algorithm” for identifying terrorist content on the Internet, it was going to continue to utilize other forms of technology, like proprietary spam-fighting tools, to supplement reports from our users and help identify repeat account abuse. It went to state that over the past six months these tools have helped them to automatically identify more than one third of the accounts they ultimately suspended for promoting terrorism.
In addition to these account suspensions, Twitter’s global Public Policy team has expanded its partnerships with organisations working to counter violent extremism (CVE) online. They work with respected organizations such as Parle-moi d’Islam (France), Imams Online (UK), Wahid Foundation (Indonesia), The Sawab Center (UAE), and True Islam (US) to empower credible non-governmental voices against violent extremism. Over the last six months, they also attended government-convened summits on CVE hosted by the French Interior Ministry and the Indonesian National Counterterrorism Agency.
Twitter promised it will continue to invest in both technology and other resources in the future and progress would be communicated regularly as part of its Transparency Report beginning in 2017.
