Twitter suspends 2.35 lakh accounts for terrorism talk, IS posts

NEW DELHI: Twitter has suspended 2,35,000 accounts promoting terrorism on its platform since February this year, the social network said in a recent blog. In all likelihood, many of those accounts were those of Islamic State (IS) supporters. Spikes in suspension over the past year came immediately after terror attacks, and daily suspensions are up 80% since last year, says the blog.

In recent years, several accounts promoting terrorism, particularly IS, have used Twitter as platform. A Brookings Institution “Twitter census” of IS supporters found they used at least 46,000 accounts of the terror group between September and December 2014. American non-profit think tank RAND Corporation studied IS support networks on Twitter between July 2014 and May 2015. They found over 75,000 accounts tweeting IS messages about 60 times a day on average. That made them 50% more active than their online detractors.

“There is no one ‘magic algorithm’ for identifying terrorist content on the Internet. But we continue to utilize other forms of technology, like proprietary spam-fighting tools, to supplement reports from our users and help identify repeat account abuse,” the Twitter policy team said.

The San Francisco-based network says it is also working with non-profit organizations on counter-extremism like Parle-moi d'Islam in France, Imams Online in the UK, Wahid Foundation in Indonesia, The Sawab Center in the UAE, and True Islam in the US. While Twitter has been acting on pro-IS accounts on its network, hacktivist groups like Anonymous have also taken to countering the terror organisation's attempts to recruit and radicalise on Twitter.

In June, after the terror attack at an Orlando bar, the group defaced IS Twitter account with pro-LGBT content, something the terror group stands strongly against. Just last month, the US government announced a 45% drop in pro-IS Twitter traffic in the last two years.

Mass messaging platforms appear to be taking the lead with pro-IS groups and individuals when it comes to spreading propaganda. Also late last month, al-Battar Me dia, a pro-IS media agency , circulated an article titled “Oh supporters, get back to the battlefield“ admonishing supporters for ditching conventional social media websites like Twitter and Facebook for secure messaging platforms like Telegram.

In its Thursday night announcement, Twitter also acknowledged the issue of su spended accounts returning under different names, and quickly accumulating followers. “We have also made progress in disrupting the ability of those suspended to immediately return to the platform.We have expanded the teams that review reports around the clock, along with their tools and language capabilities,“ the company's post said.

Islamophobic tweets in English saw highest-ever spike in July

Nearly 7,000 Islamophobic tweets written in English were sent every day in July, a huge increase on the 2,500 per day in April.The phenomenon spiked in the wake of the Nice attack and the coup bid in Turkey. Thinktank Demos discovered the increase in Islamophobic tweets by tracing 49 keywords and hashtags as indicators. Between March and July, they found 215,247 tweets sent in English that were “highly likely“ to be intended as anti-Islamic and derogatory. The biggest spike of 21,190 occurred on July 15, the day after 85 people were killed in Nice.