One hundred and twenty-five thousand Twitter accounts primarily associated with the Islamic State group have been suspended according to Twitter on Friday, as they step up the fight against hate over social media.
This is the first time the company has given an account of how many extremist associated Twitter accounts have been suspended. The company has also said that is has added more teams that review accounts reportedly connected to extremism, to remove them at a faster rate.
In a statement, Twitter said, “As the nature of the terrorist threat has changed, so has our ongoing work in this area,” adding that they “condemns the use of Twitter to promote terrorism.”
Groups like the Islamic State do not just use Twitter, but also encrypted apps like Telegram, Whatsapp, Signal and Surespot. All these apps are less likely to be intercepted by agencies like the FBI.
James B. Comey Jr., director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation called Twitter out last December when he said that Twitter works as a way to crowdsource terrorism or sell murder. This later followed by pressure from the White House for technology companies to put up a tougher fight against these extremist groups.
While Twitter publicly disclosing these figures for the first time may sound shocking to some, the company has, in fact, been working hard at closing these extremist accounts for over a year. Long before any criticism from government officials.
Dr. Lorena Brownlee 