Twitter suspension of terrorist accounts
People holding mobile phones are silhouetted against a backdrop projected with the Twitter logo in this illustration picture taken in Warsaw September 27, 2013. Reuters/Kacper Pempel

Suspension of terrorist-leaning and violence-promoting accounts on Twitter has risen by almost 200 percent after the tech company stepped up its efforts to combat violent extremism on social media.

In a statement, Twitter said it has suspended 235,000 accounts in the past six months for violating the company’s policies against promotion of terrorism on social media. In Feb. 6, Twitter announced that it has dismissed 125,000 accounts for threatening or promoting terrorist acts since mid 2015.

“This brings our overall number of suspensions to 360,000 since the middle of 2015. As noted by numerous third parties, our efforts continue to drive meaningful results, including a significant shift in this type of activity off of Twitter,” the company announced in a blog post.

The latest statistics represents a 188 percent increase in suspension rate. Twitter said its daily suspension has also risen by 80 percent since last year, especially immediately following terrorist attacks reported across the globe.

“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. We also collaborate with other social platforms, sharing information and best practices for identifying terrorist content,” Twitter explained.

The San Francisco, California-based company clarified that while there is no “magic algorithm” to identify terrorist content on the Internet, it has utilised various technologies and cooperated with governments and non-government agencies to identify account abuse.

“ In fact, over the past six months these tools have helped us to automatically identify more than one third of the accounts we ultimately suspended for promoting terrorism.

“We will continue to invest in both technology and other resources in the future and you can expect us to update our progress regularly as part of our Transparency Report beginning in 2017.”

On its online Transparency Report, Twitter published details of the number of suspension requests it has generated from governments and non-government organizations around the world.

Based on the 2015 statistics, the United States made the most suspension request, comprising 48 percent of the total requests Twitter has received, followed by France, where a string of terrorist attacks were held last year.

Already, Twitter has partnered with anti-extremism organisations worldwide such as Parle-moi d’Islam of France, Imams Online of the UK, Wahid Foundation in Indonesia, The Sawab Center in the UAE, and True Islam in the US.