Twitter Deletes Nearly 400,000 Terrorism-Related Accounts

Twitter has stated that they shut down 377,000 Twitter accounts in the second half of 2016 for promoting terrorism on the social media platform.

Following pressure to crack down on terrorism-linked accounts on their platform, Twitter has revealed in their latest transparency report that between July 1 and December 31, 2016, as many as 377,000 possibly terrorism-related accounts have been suspended from the platform. According to the report, 74 percent of the accounts suspended were “surfaced” or recognized by internal spam-fighting robots.

The report further stated that Twiter has shut down a total of 636,248 accounts for promoting terror or terrorism-related groups since August of 2015, which is when the company began actively seeking out accounts linked to terror groups. Twitter’s recently released figures show an increase of 355,500 accounts compared to the figures released last summer.

Twitter was accused in August of last year of “consciously failing” to combat promotion of terrorism and extremism on their platform by the British Home Affair Committee. The committee also referred to Twitter as a “recruiting platform” for terrorism and said that the current efforts by the company to take down terrorist groups utilizing their services amounted to “a drop in the ocean.”

Twitter has faced multiple lawsuits for their failure to combat terrorism on their platform. The family of a former Florida Sheriff who was killed while providing police training in the Middle East sued Twitter stating that the company “knowingly permitted” ISIS accounts to spread extremist propaganda. Similarly, the father of a victim of the Paris terrorist attacks sued Facebook, Google, and Twitter for allowing terrorists to coordinate via their platforms.