Twitter says it shut down 235,000 pro-terrorism accounts since February
Twitter Inc. said Thursday that it has shut down more than 235,000 accounts for promoting terrorism since February, far surpassing the 125,000 it had suspended in the previous seven months.
That brings the total number of such suspensions to 360,000 since June 2015.
Since February, “the world has witnessed a further wave of deadly, abhorrent terror attacks across the globe,” the San Francisco company said in a blog post. Attacks linked to or inspired by Islamic State have occurred in France, Germany, Turkey, Iraq and Florida, among other locations. “We strongly condemn these acts and remain committed to eliminating the promotion of violence or terrorism on our platform,” the company said.
For the last two years, the popular social media site has sought to respond to criticism that it wasn’t doing enough to crack down on users who promote or are linked to Islamic State or other terrorist groups. It began mass suspensions in early 2014.
In December, after the San Bernardino mass shootings, President Obama called on tech leaders to “make it harder for terrorists to use technology to escape from justice.” Earlier this year, senior national security officials, including the attorney general and FBI director, met with tech firm senior executives to discuss ways to use technology to “disrupt paths to radicalization to violence.”
In its blog post, Twitter said daily suspensions are up more than 80% since last year, with spikes in suspensions immediately following terror 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,” it said. “We have also made progress in disrupting the ability of those suspended to immediately return to the platform.”
The company said it has expanded the teams that review reports around the clock, adding new tools to help detect suspicious accounts and hiring people fluent in different languages. The firm said it also collaborates with other social media companies, sharing information for identifying terrorist content.
“There is no one ‘magic algorithm’ for identifying terrorist content on the Internet,” the company said. But it deploys technologies such as proprietary spam-fighting tools to supplement reports from the public to help identify people who violate Twitter’s user policies. During the last six months, these tools have helped the firm to automatically identify more than one-third of the accounts that were ultimately suspended for promoting terrorism, the company said.
Twitter said it works with law enforcement agencies seeking help in preventing or prosecuting terrorist attacks. It reports on government requests for information twice a year in its transparency report.
Nakashima writes for the Washington Post.
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