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Twitter suspends 125,000 terrorism-related accounts

Xinhua, February 6, 2016 Adjust font size:

Twitter said on Friday it has suspended 125,000 accounts primarily related to the terrorist group known as Islamic State (IS) since the middle of 2015.

The social media network, based in this U.S. west coast city with more than 500 million users worldwide, said in a tweet that its policy does not permit the use of Twitter to promote terrorism.

Twitter, compared with other U.S.-based networks of its kind, has been considered to be more reluctant to intervene against contents posted by users.

In its history of nearly 10 years, it has had a system in place against child pornography.

According to a report released in 2015 by Brookings Institution, a Washington D.C.-based think tank, the IS had at least 46,000 active Twitter accounts over a three-month period in 2014.

The pressure for Twitter to curb propaganda by the IS and other extremist groups comes from the U.S. government as well as non-government groups and individuals. Last month, it was sued by the widow of a U.S. national killed in an attack on a Jordanian police training center.

The plaintiff alleged that Twitter makes it easy for the IS to promote violence.

However, Twitter said on Friday it has "always sought to strike a balance between the enforcement of our own Twitter Rules covering prohibited behaviors, the legitimate needs of law enforcement, and the ability of users to share their views freely - including views that some people may disagree with or find offensive."

Meanwhile, the network said it has increased the size of the teams that review terrorism-related reports, so as to reduce its response time.

"We also look into other accounts similar to those reported and leverage proprietary spam-fighting tools to surface other potentially violating accounts for review by our agents," it said, claiming that "we have already seen results, including an increase in account suspensions and this type of activity shifting off of Twitter."

Acknowledging that there is no "magic algorithm" for identifying terrorist content on the internet, Twitter said it will "continue to aggressively enforce our Rules in this area." Endit