Twitter suspends 360,000 accounts to counter violent extremism

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ISIS and other terrorist organizations have been using social media to spread their message and recruit people. This has created an immense pressure for social networking sites to counter such exploitation.

In previous years, Twitter has come under fire for being lenient when dealing with such activities.

Yesterday, Twitter made an official announcement that the platform has suspended 235,000 accounts in an effort to combat violent extremism. Earlier this year in February, Twitter announced the suspension of 125,000 accounts for threatening and promoting violent acts. The total number of suspended accounts since mid-2015 has reached 360,000.

Twitter has openly stated that it has no “magic algorithm” to remove such accounts by identifying the violent nature of its content.

However, the social network has increased the number of total suspensions on a per day basis by 80 percent since last year. Twitter has claimed to have increased its resources and investments in order update the progress regularly as a part of their Transparency Report, beginning in 2017.

To eradicate the violent content and identify such activities on Twitter, the firm has also partnered with reputable Islamic organizations worldwide to empower credible non-governmental voices to counter violent extremism.

Twitter’s announcement of account suspension for countering violent extremism shows the efforts put up by the platform. However, safeguarding it from such exploitation in future and developing a mechanism to respond in a timely manner is still in question.