Twitter suspended 235,000 accounts for promoting terrorism in the last six months and has been stepping up its efforts to pull down this type of content, the social media company said Thursday.
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Twitter has also gotten faster at suspending accounts that users have reported and is working to prevent users from returning to the social media platform with new accounts.
Salaam Bhatti, the national spokesperson for True Islam, a group which has partnered with Twitter in identifying extremist content, said: “This is a great step in the right direction”.
Daily suspensions of accounts are up more than 80 percent since a year ago, and spike in the immediate aftermath of attacks claimed by militant groups, Twitter said in a statement posted on its blog.
However, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube have caused controversy in Britain in recent days by reportedly refusing to take down the accounts of controversial preacher Anjem Choudary who was found guilty of inviting support for the Islamic State group.
“We strongly condemn these acts and remain committed to eliminating the promotion of violence or terrorism on our platform”, Twitter said in the blog post.
The company relies primarily on user reports to identify offending accounts, and said it has increased the size of the team reviewing reports.
Daily suspensions are now higher by more than 80 percent year-over-year, and the company now claims its response time in banning terrorist supporting accounts has “decreased dramatically”.
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The company also says it has made progression on reducing the amount of time violators are on Twitter and reducing their followers. The judge agreed with Twitter that the company can not be held liable because federal law protects service providers that merely offer platforms for speech, without creating the speech itself. The Obama administration said last month that Twitter traffic for ISIS has declined significantly over the past two years.
