SAN FRANCISCO — Twitter
suspended 235,000 accounts that promoted terrorism over the last six
months, as part of a continuing effort to keep people from using the
social network for extremist causes, the company said Thursday.
“The
world has witnessed a further wave of deadly, abhorrent terror attacks
across the globe,” Twitter said in a statement. “We strongly condemn
these acts and remain committed to eliminating the promotion of violence
or terrorism on our platform.”
Twitter’s latest action brings the total number of accounts that the company has suspended to 360,000 since it began cracking down
on terrorism and violent extremism in mid-2015. While Twitter has long
championed free speech on the web and said that it was a “global town
square,” its positioning has drawn bullies, racists and extremist groups
to the service to spread their messages. That has drawn criticism from
government agencies and the Democratic presidential nominee Hillary
Clinton, among others.
While
Twitter is trying to find a way to reconcile its free speech stance
with how women and minorities can be targeted on the service, the
company has been clearer about combating terrorism. Daily suspensions
for violating Twitter’s prohibition on terrorism are up over 80 percent
since last year, with spikes in suspensions immediately following
terrorist attacks, the company said.
Twitter
also said it has expanded its teams that review reported violations,
and it now moves faster to suspend accounts and make it harder for
suspended users to return to the platform. The company has also expanded
the number of groups it works with to counter violent extremism online.
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.
Yet
Anil Dash, a tech entrepreneur and activist, said Twitter’s actions did
not solve the service’s underlying abuse issues. Even if extremist
content and accounts are suspended, people on Twitter can still organize
in ways that put others at risk, such as publishing and widely sharing
someone’s personal information and home address.
“The
news about banned accounts and new tools is really good, but Twitter
has been doing those things for a long time,” Mr. Dash said. “This has
more to do with Twitter’s ability to talk about abuse than it is a big
change in policy.” NYTimes
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