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Twitter suspends almost one million accounts for promoting terrorism

This article is more than 12 months old

SAN FRANCISCO: Twitter on Tuesday touted victories in the battle against tweets promoting extremist violence, saying it has been vanquishing those kinds of accounts before governments even ask.

Twitter highlighted progress in its latest transparency report, noting that between the start of August in 2015 and June 30 of this year, it has suspended 935,897 accounts for "promotion of terrorism."

Internal monitoring was credited with identifying the bulk of accounts shuttered for these reasons, with less than 1 per cent of the suspensions in the first half of this year resulting from government requests.

Twitter removed 299,649 accounts during the first half of this year for such activity, according to the report.

The one-to-many messaging service has been under pressure to prevent itself from being used as a platform for spreading hate or recruiting people to jihadist causes.

Twitter classified terror-related accounts as those that "incite... violence associated with internationally recognised terrorist organisations, promote internationally recognised terrorist organisations, and accounts attempting to evade prior enforcement".

Abusive behaviour was the top category resulting in Twitter accounts being shut down. - AFP

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