Twitter suspends over 300K accounts promoting terrorism

Twitter announced that it has suspended over 3,00,000 accounts across the globe linked to terrorism. Of those around 95 percent, accounts were identified by the company's spam-fighting automation tools.

Twitter said about 75% of the blocked accounts this year were spotted before a single tweet was sent, and that 935,897 accounts had been suspended since August 2015, with two-thirds of those coming in the past year.

“Our anti-spam tools are getting faster, more efficient and smarter in how we take down accounts that violate our policy,” Twitter said in a statement.

The company's report revealed that 95 percent of the suspended terrorism-related accounts were flagged for review by algorithms, rather than human users or reviewers, up from 74 percent in the previous six months.

Overall, Twitter has suspended 20 percent fewer accounts compared with the previous period between July and December. Twitter also revealed details behind takedown requests it received from governments for content violating terms of service, such as the promotion of terrorism or abusive behavior.

Twitter said it received 6448 demands for data from governments in the first half of the year, resulting in the handover of some data in 60 percent cases.  The US made 211 demands for 4594 accounts(down by 8 percent year over year), while the UK made 606 demands for data on 819 accounts(down by 11 percent year over year).