TWITTER Inc said on Friday (February 5) it had suspended over 125,000 accounts since mid-2015 for “threatening or promoting terrorist acts, primarily related to ISIS.”
Reuters said the microblogging service provider said in a blog on Friday that it had increased the size of the teams that review reports of such activity, reducing the response time significantly.
The company said it was seeing results, including an increase in account suspensions and “this type of activity” shifting away from Twitter.
A report by CNBC said this is the first time Twitter has revealed the scale of terrorist related activity on its service.
“The Brookings Institution estimated in a report last year that there were at least 46,000 Twitter accounts used by ISIS supporters. The new figure revealed by Twitter would suggest that either ISIS has drastically increased its presence on the service since that year, or that Twitter has gotten more effective in identifying terrorist accounts,” it said.
“We have already seen results, including an increase in account suspensions and this type of activity shifting off of Twitter,” Twitter said.
Twitter’s announcement came after a controversy over the role of social media in the lives of the apparently ISIS inspired team that killed 14 people in an attack in San Bernardino, California, in December, CNBC reported.
“Ultimately, the FBI said that the husband and wife terror team did not post pro-jihad sentiments publicly on social media before the attack, but sent them in private message communications,” it said. (with reports from Reuters and CNBC)