Twitter Controls Are Weeding Out Users Advocating Violence

Twitter Inc said that its internal controls were allowing it to weed out accounts being used for the “promotion of terrorism” earlier rather than responding to government requests to close them down.

Reuters reports U.S. and European governments have been pressuring social media companies including Twitter, Facebook Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google to fight harder against online radicalization, particularly by violent Islamist groups.

Twitter said it had removed 299,649 accounts in the first half of this year for the “promotion of terrorism”, a 20 percent decline from the previous six months, although it gave no reason for the drop. Three-quarters of those accounts were suspended before posting their first tweet.

Less than 1 percent of account suspensions were due to government requests, Twitter said, while 95 percent were thanks to the company’s internal efforts to combat radical content with “proprietary tools”, up from 74 percent in its last twice-yearly transparency report.

Twitter defines “promotion of terrorism” as actively inciting or promoting violence “associated with internationally recognized terrorist organizations.”

The vast majority of notices from governments concerned “abusive behavior”, which includes violent threats, harassment, hateful conduct and impersonation.

Twitter said it had removed 935,897 accounts for promotion of terrorism between August 1, 2015 and June 30 this year.

Twitter said it had received eight requests from governments to take down content posted by journalists and news organizations in the first half of 2017 but did not act on any of them “because of their political and journalistic nature.”