A Twitter founder and employees now face threats on their lives from ISIS supporters, who have called on jihadis around the world to kill employees of the micro-blogging site. The threat is in response to the company’s decision to frequently block accounts related to ISIS.
Open warning from ISIS
Twitter has become extremely popular worldwide, and is being widely used by many organizations to spread their point of view. To thwart the misuse of the platform, the company has deactivated all the suspicious Twitter accounts. This has led to outrage among the ISIS supporters, and to avenge this they wish to kill several Twitter employees.
An online post, which has been shared by ISIS supporters, threatens Twitter founder Jack Dorsey saying, “Your virtual war on us will cause a real war on you.” The authorship of the post is not clear for now, but the post includes a digitally edited image of Dorsey in the cross sights of a gun.
“You started this failed war,” the ISIS post says. “We told you from the beginning it’s not your war, but you didn’t get it and kept closing our accounts on Twitter, but we always come back.” It further said that, when “our lions [brave men] come and take your breath, you will never come back to life.”
Twitter actively takes action on such accounts
Most of the videos circulated by ISIS through YouTube and Twitter are ones showinf gruesome execution of hostages. Both companies remove such posts almost immediately along with deactivating the accounts involved.
Twitter’s terms of service do not allow posting any objectionable materials on the site including posting or publishing “direct, specific threats of violence against others.” Usage of service by the users “for any unlawful purposes or in furtherance of illegal activities” is also banned. This new threat to Twitter employees follows a recent video posted by ISIS on Twitter to encourage the followers to attack police or military officials in the United States, the United Kingdom and France.
Commenting on the matter, Twitter said that its investigation team is working with the concerned authorities to determine the “veracity of these threats.”
