Over One Million Twitter Accounts Suspended For Promoting Terrorism

According to the latest Twitter Transparency Report, 1.2 million Twitter accounts have been suspended since August 2015 due to \”promotion of terrorism\”.

The social media giant also said that between July 1st, 2017 and December 31st, 2017 a total of 274,460 accounts were permanently suspended for violations related to advocating terrorism.

\”This is down 8.4% from the volume shared in the previous reporting period and is the second consecutive reporting period in which we’ve seen a drop in the number of accounts being suspended for this reason,\” said a company spokesperson.

The spokesperson continued:

\”We continue to see the positive, significant impact of years of hard work making our site an undesirable place for those seeking to promote terrorism, resulting in this type of activity increasingly shifting away from Twitter.\”

In the last reporting period, Twitter said 93 percent of the 274,460 suspended accounts were \”flagged by internal, proprietary tools,\” and that 74 percent were cut off before their first tweet.

It said government reports of violations related to the promotion of terrorism represent less than 0.2 percent of all suspensions in the period.

Twitter also used the report to express concerns about what it called \”legal threats to freedom of expression\” online in countries around the world.

\”With the passage of new legislation and ongoing regulatory discussions taking place around the world about the future of public discourse online, we are seeing a potential chilling effect with regards to freedom of expression,\” the report said.