Twitter is very serious about denying its services to ISIS and its supporters, and therefore, is putting a big effort into identifying and suspending any accounts it suspects to be linked with the organization.
Twitter going after ISIS accounts
Last week, several Twitter accounts started disappearing, as observed by a set of activists who monitor Twitter traffic of the Islamic State and its supporters. They believe the missing accounts have very likely been suspended.
On Thursday, a report from the New York Times citing a representative at Twitter confirmed the speculations of the activists, saying about 10,000 accounts were shut down for posting violent threats. As per the representative, Twitter’s network’s violations department deactivated 10,000 accounts on the 2nd of April, for “tweeting violent threats.”
Since the data has not been made public by Twitter, this assertion by the company cannot be verified independently, says the report. This act of deactivating accounts linked to Islamic State in such large number by Twitter is the first of its kind.
Help from other groups
Apart from Twitter, several other groups also help to recognize ISIS-linked accounts. Such groups, including some hacking groups and online vigilantes, keep an active check on the suspicious activities taking place on Twitter, and whenever they suspect an account of violating the terms of use, they try to get them deactivated.
Experts believe that there are 90,000 such accounts linked to ISIS, which is also known as ISIL and Daesh. ISIS makes broad usage of social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook for exchanging messages, making violent threats and also for spreading their propaganda. Twitter has been criticized on numerous occasions for allowing such groups to make use of its services. Twitter has been actively deactivating suspicious accounts for several months now, and previously acknowledged deleting 2000 ISIS-linked account per week, says the report.
Twitter, which carries around 500 million messages on a daily basis, offer tweets in several languages. Tweeting is a mode of free expression of thoughts and ideas, which is why Twitter has to shoulder the responsibility of assuring that violence is not promoted.
