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Twitter Suspends Over 3 Lakh Accounts Linked To Extremism

In an attempt to combat digital terrorism, Twitter has suspended 360,000 accounts linked to terror activities since middle of 2015. The company is its official blog postsaid that it has suspended an additional 235,000 accounts for violating company’s policies related to promotion of terrorism in the six months since February 2016.

Twitter said that earlier this year, it has suspended more than 125,000 accounts since mid-2015 for “violating longtime prohibition on violent threats and the promotion of terrorism and shared a number of steps to combat such content.

Since then, the world has witnessed a further wave of deadly, abhorrent terror attacks across the globe. We strongly condemn these acts and remain committed to eliminating the promotion of violence or terrorism on our platform” the blog post said.

Also Read: When Terror Meets Technology

Social media platforms are increasingly becoming a weapon of terror outfits to spread violence and propagate radicalism. The platforms like Twitter are being widely used to instigate rioters in recent terror attacks. Twitter has previously come under fire from Washington and third-party groups for not doing enough to stop accounts linked to Islamic State militants. But, since February, it has suspended an additional 235,000 accounts, after halting 125,000 accounts since the middle of 2015, most of which were related to Islamic State.

Twitter on Thursday separately introduced new features to give people more control over their interactions on the service, including adding a filter to improve the quality of the tweets someone sees by weeding out duplicate messages or automated posts.

The Blog post revealed that “other companies and experts have also noted, 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.”

Meanwhile, ISIS-linked groups have reportedly issued threats aimed personally at CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in response to the companies’ efforts to purge user accounts spreading terror propaganda.

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