Twitter Shuts Down 125K Terrorist Accounts

Terrorist organizations, particularly the Islamic State (ISIS), have become adept at exploiting social media platforms and other online forums to spread propaganda, recruit followers, and call for attacks.

Well-known social networking service, Twitter Inc., has decided to do something about it. On Friday the company announced that it has suspended 125,000 accounts for promoting or threatening terrorism, reports Homeland Security Today .

"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 company stated in a blog post. "As the nature of the terrorist threat has changed, so has our ongoing work in this area."

Twitter also said they have increased the size of the teams that review reports, reducing response time, and are leveraging proprietary spam-fighting tools to identify other accounts with potential terrorist connections.

"We have already seen results, including an increase in account suspensions and this type of activity shifting off of Twitter," the company said.

The company also highlighted their commitment to partnering with law enforcement when necessary, highlighting a statement by Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James B. Comey in July 2015 when he praised Twitter as "very good and thoughtful and hardworking at trying to shut down [terrorism-related] accounts."