Skip to main content

Twitter says it shuttered 377,000 accounts that promote terrorism in six months

In the ongoing battle to purge Twitter of content promoting terrorism, the social media company has closed hundreds of thousands of accounts in recent months.

In its latest transparency report covering the period from July 1, 2016 through December 31, 2016, Twitter said it shuttered a total of 376,890 accounts “for violations related to promotion of terrorism,” bringing the total number of closures for terror-related content to a colossal 636,248 accounts from August 1, 2015 through December 31, 2016.

Recommended Videos

Faced with such a massive task, Twitter has had to develop proprietary tools designed to automatically identify accounts to take down. The software, which is supported by a team of human investigators, accounted for 74 percent of the most recent batch of reported account closures, the company said.

Twitter, like Facebook and other online giants, has been accused in the past of not doing enough to combat extremist activity on its service. Criticism over the last few years prompted the company to implement more robust procedures such as increasing the size of the teams that respond to reports, and taking any necessary action more quickly.

In addition, the company made efforts to start checking more accounts similar to those reported, while it continues to develop algorithms to automatically surface potentially violating accounts for review.

Twitter said it’s also worked harder to prevent those whose accounts are shuttered from quickly returning to the service, though it hasn’t revealed how exactly it does this.

A turning point in the way online companies deal with terror-related activity online came at the start of last year when leading executives from Twitter, Facebook, Microsoft, Google, and others met officials for talks in not only the U.S., but France, too, a country that has suffered multiple terror attacks in recent years.

In December, 2016, the same companies announced they would begin contributing to a shared database holding information on “violent terrorist” material found on the different platforms to help each other remove extremist content more quickly.

Removing such material from online services quickly and efficiently — and keeping it offline — is an ongoing challenge, though Twitter, for one, feels it is making progress, saying last year, “We have already seen results, including an increase in account suspensions and this type of activity shifting off of Twitter.”

Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
Bluesky finally adds a feature many had been waiting for
A blue sky with clouds.

Bluesky has been making a lot of progress in recent months by simplifying the process to sign up while at the same time rolling out a steady stream of new features.

As part of those continuing efforts, the social media app has just announced that users can now send direct messages (DMs).

Read more
Reddit just achieved something for the first time in its 20-year history
The Reddit logo.

Reddit’s on a roll. The social media platform has just turned a profit for the first time in its 20-year history, and now boasts a record 97.2 million daily active users, marking a year-over-year increase of 47%. A few times during the quarter, the figure topped 100 million, which Reddit CEO and co-founder Steve Huffman said in a letter to shareholders had been a “long-standing milestone” for the site.

The company, which went public in March, announced the news in its third-quarter earnings results on Tuesday.

Read more
Worried about the TikTok ban? This is how it might look on your phone
TikTok splash screen on an Android phone.

The US Supreme Court has decided to uphold a law that would see TikTok banned in the country on January 19. Now, the platform has issued an official statement, confirming that it will indeed shut down unless it gets some emergency relief from the outgoing president.

“Unless the Biden Administration immediately provides a definitive statement to satisfy the most critical service providers assuring non-enforcement, unfortunately TikTok will be forced to go dark on January 19,” said the company soon after the court’s verdict.
So, what does going dark mean?
So, far, there is no official statement on what exactly TikTok means by “going dark.” There is a lot of speculation out there on how exactly the app or website will look once TikTok shutters in the US.

Read more