Twitter suspends over 125,000 accounts related to Isis

Twitter, since mid-2015, has suspended more than 125,000 accounts for "threatening or promoting terrorist acts," related to the Islamic State (Isis), the micro-blogging site has said.

In an attempt to deal with extremism, Twitter says it has increased the size of its team that reviews reports. Apart from monitoring accounts similar to those that have been reported, it launched spam-fighting tools to uncover violating accounts for further review. As a result of a Twitter campaign initiated by activists in October 2015, about 300 IS (Daesh) and other radical accounts were deactivated.

Twitter says, "We condemn the use of Twitter to promote terrorism and the Twitter Rules make it clear that this type of behavior, or any violent threat, is not permitted on our service."

The social networking site has also partnered with several organisations to combat extremist content online. It has teamed up with organisations such as People Against Violent Extremism (Pave) and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue to empower voices against violent extremism.

"As an open platform for expression, we have always sought to strike a balance between the enforcement of our own Twitter Rules covering prohibited behaviors, the legitimate needs of law enforcement, and the ability of users to share their views freely – including views that some people may disagree with or find offensive," notes Twitter in a blog posting.

According to a study in 2014, about 46,000 accounts had been used to post extremist content and the figure went up within a year, suggests a BBC report. However, Twitter is quite serious about dealing with these issues and have been doing whatever it can to keep the online platform secure.

In December 2015, US politicians put forth a bill that would make social networking sites report any terrorist activity they find. Even EU officials have been calling for talks with social media companies to discuss these issues.

Facebook is also taking initiatives to fight extremism. It revamped its community standards to separate dangerous organisations. It said it would ban groups promoting terrorist activity, organised criminal activity or promoting hate.