National Security

Twitter Claims To Have Shut Down 235,000 Accounts Connected To Terrorism In Past 6 Months

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Eric Lieberman Managing Editor
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Twitter has terminated more than 235,000 accounts associated with terrorism in the past six months, the social media company announced Thursday.

“This brings our overall number of suspensions to 360,000 since the middle of 2015,” the tech conglomerate states. “As noted by numerous third parties, our efforts continue to drive meaningful results, including a significant shift in this type of activity off of Twitter.”

Within the statement, Twitter cites multiples articles and tweets that either applaud or highlight their ability to give terrorist and terrorist sympathizers the boot.

Twitter has been accused of not proactively combatting terrorism since many extremist groups, like ISIL, use the website as a main means for communication, recruitment, fundraising and propaganda. A father of a daughter who was killed in the Paris attacks sued Twitter along with other tech companies for permitting “the terrorist group ISIS to use their social networks as a tool.”

Twitter was able to dismiss an ongoing lawsuit just more than a week ago that stated the company was at least partially responsible for the death of a man who was killed in an ISIS raid abroad.

It is not exactly clear how many Twitter accounts the Islamic State currently operates under, but last year it was reported that approximately 46,000 were controlled by ISIS. But the social media company claims that “daily suspensions are up over 80 percent since last year.”

While Twitter claims that “there is no one ‘magic algorithm’ for identifying terrorist content on the Internet” they are able to weed out evildoers by utilizing “other forms of technology, like proprietary spam-fighting tools, to supplement reports from ours users and help identify repeat account abuse.”

All of the work is not conducted internally. Twitter plans on maintaining their relationship with both American and foreign law enforcement to collaborate and share vital information.

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Tags : isil twitter
Eric Lieberman