Twitter axes 235,000 accounts for violent threats and promoting terrorism

Twitter has suspended 235,000 accounts for violating the company's policies on promoting violence and terrorism, officials announced on Friday (18 August). The latest action brings the total number of suspended accounts in the last year for such activity to 360,000.

Daily suspensions are up 80% over the same time last year, according to Twitter officials, due to a rise in terrorist attacks are boasts on social media. Twitter has also expanded the number of people reviewing reports of Twitter misuse, according to a statement.

"Our efforts continue to drive meaningful results, including a significant shift in this type of activity off of Twitter," it said.

"Our response time for suspending reported accounts, the amount of time these accounts are on Twitter, and the number of followers they accumulate have all decreased dramatically. We have also made progress in disrupting the ability of those suspended to immediately return to the platform."

Twitter also said the company is working with other social media sites and law enforcement agencies to share information to discover problematic accounts sooner. Twitter are also working globally with organisations such as Parle-moi d'Islam in France and the UK's Imams Online.

There is no single "magic algorithm" for "identifying terrorist content on the Internet," noted the Twitter statement. "But we continue to utilise other forms of technology, like proprietary spam-fighting tools, to supplement reports from our users and help identify repeat account abuse."

Twitter said that Islamic State (Isis) traffic has plummeted 45%. Much of the propaganda from IS (Daesh) extremists has moved from Twitter to other platforms, such as the encrypted messaging service, Telegram, a representative with the Terrorism Research and Analysis Consortium told USA Today.