To protect users from cyber harassment and bullying, Twitter has suspended 235,000 accounts in the last six months. This brings the total number of suspended accounts in the last 12 months to 360,000. The social networking service took the decision after users continued to violate its policies and promoted terrorism and extremism propaganda on the platform.
“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.”
The micro-blogging website has been under the line of fire for quite some time now. Over the last few months, it has been heavily criticized due to some users posting violent and extremist content over the platform. Twitter has taken several measures to resolve this issue and provide more privacy to its users. For instance, the company rolled out a new feature yesterday called Quality Filter, which allows users to filter out their timeline and only see the tweets of those they follow.
The official blog post mentioned that Twitter is working to distort the ability of extremist to create new accounts by expanding its teams that review reports filed by users regarding cyber bullying and misuse of its platform. The company has struggled to maintain balance between freedom of speech and extremist content on its platform. In February, it suspended 125,000 user accounts that violated its policies regarding extremist content. Twitter said that its daily suspension has increased by more than 80% compared to last year.
"We have expanded the teams that review reports around the clock, along with their tools and language capabilities," Twitter said in its blog. "We also collaborate with other social platforms, and share information and best practices for identifying terrorist content."
Twitter has always faced intense competition from Facebook. The social media giant currently boasts 1.6 billion monthly active users (MAUs) on its platform. On the other hand, Twitter only has 310 million subscribers on its platform. Many experts believe that Twitter failed to create traction among the users due to ongoing harassment on its platform.
Earlier this year, several tech giants including Facebook, Google and Twitter met with the White House officials to resolve terrorism/extremism related issues on their platforms. The tech giants have also set up several meetings with the Government of France, a country that has had more than its share of terrorist attacks in the last two years.
It‘s pretty obvious that there is no algorithm to detect terrorists or extremist content. Twitter has no option but to make judgment calls based on very limited evidence and guidance. Despite all these challenges, the company plans to work with relevant authorities and organizations to resolve this issue.
