Twitter shuts down 1,25,000 accounts for promoting terrorism

Twitter has suspended over 1,25,000 accounts, most of them linked to the Islamic State militant group, “for threatening or promoting terrorist acts” even as handles of India-centric terrorist organisations and individuals on the micro-blogging site remain untouched.

In a blog, the US-based firm said, “As the nature of the terrorist threat has changed, so has our ongoing work in this area. Since the middle of 2015 alone, we’ve suspended over 125,000 accounts for threatening or promoting terrorist acts, primarily related to IS”.

Twitter, however, did not respond to questions about the accounts of terrorist organisations operating from Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Notably, Hafeez Saeed, the mastermind of 26/11 Mumbai attack, has been openly calling for carrying out brazen attack against India in his latest tweet on February 3.

Twitter condemned the use of its platform to promote terrorism and said the ‘Twitter Rules’ make it clear that this type of behaviour, or any violent threat, is not permitted on its service.

The company said it has increased its report reviewing teams to react faster.

“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. We have already seen results, including an increase in account suspensions and this type of activity shifting off of Twitter,” it said.

The White House, which for the past several months has been working to deny cyber safe havens to terrorist organisations in particular to IS, has welcomed the move.

“We’d refer you to Twitter for the details of their announcement, which we very much welcome,” a senior administration official said.

“As the President has said, countering the vile ideology of IS and similar groups in the digital sphere is a priority for both government and the private sector. That is part of why a group of senior administration officials and technology sector leaders met last month in Silicon Valley  to ensure we are bringing our best private and public sector thinking to combating terrorism,” the official said.