Twitter suspended 1.21 million accounts in 2015-17 for promoting terror

Twitter Inc. on Thursday, April 5, said that it has suspended 1.21 million accounts between August 2015 and end of 2017 on grounds of "violations related to the promotion of terrorism". It also added that the number of such accounts was seeing a drop.

The social media said 2,74,460 of these accounts were suspended in late 2017 which was 8.4 per cent less from the previous reporting period and the second consecutive period in which Twitter witnessed a reduction in the number of accounts suspended owing to the same reason. The microblogging site said this in a blog post which covered its 12th biannual "transparency report".

It was also informed by Twitter that 74 per cent of the accounts covered in the latest period of reporting was suspended even before the posting the first tweet.

Twitter expressed a sense of satisfaction saying its hard work over the years in making the social media platform an unsuitable place "for those seeking to promote terrorism" paid off and now the tendency has gone down.

It also said that a majority of the accounts suspended in late 2017 "were flagged by internal, proprietary tools" and government's reports on such violations accounted for only 0.2 per cent of all suspensions.

Twitter started taking action in 2014 facing criticism

Twitter began its 'cleanliness drive' in 2014 after facing criticism that it wasn't doing enough to stop people who were using it with sinister designs of promoting extremism.

In December 2015, after 14 people were massacred in a shooting at San Bernardino, California, the then US president Barack Obama approached Twitter and other tech companies with the plea to make it difficult for the terrorists to use technology to evade justice.

Twitter also faced the wrath of the kin of the victims of the 2015 attack in May last year along with Google and Facebook as they filed a federal lawsuit against the tech giants accusing them of purposefully backing the Islamic State terrorist outfit.