Monday, 8 February 2016

Twitter Suspends 125,000 'Terrorism' Accounts

Twitter Suspends 125,000 'Terrorism' Accounts
The social media firm uses spam-fighting technology to seek out accounts that threaten or promote terrorism.
19:49, UK,
Saturday 06 February 2016


Video: Crackdown On Online Extremism
Twitter has suspended more than 125,000 accounts for threatening or promoting terrorist acts - most related to Islamic State.

The accounts have been shut down over the past eight months as social media firms respond to pressure from the US government for them to be more proactive.

Twitter has been using spam-fighting technology to seek out accounts.

Islamic State is known to use social media to radicalise and lure recruits, prompting Twitter to "significantly" increase the size of its reviewing team.

The company said it had already had seen "an increase in account suspensions and this type of activity shifting off of Twitter".



Video: 2015: Inside IS Social Media Centre
But it added there was no "magic algorithm" for identifying terrorist content.

"Like most people around the world, we are horrified by the atrocities perpetrated by extremist groups," Twitter said in a statement.

"We condemn the use of Twitter to promote terrorism."

The statement added that the company would continue to "engage with authorities and other relevant organisations to find solutions to this critical issue and promote powerful counter-speech narratives".


Child pornography had previously been the only abuse that was automatically flagged by technology for human review.

Response:
This article discusses actions that social media is taking against terrorism. Terrorism went to a new level particularly when there was a phenomena of ISIS calling vulnerable people to join their cause. At first it seemed like a joke that a terrorist organization had a Twitter, but it became very dangerous as the account got a lot of followers. People actually began to travel to join ISIS. This technique ISIS utilized went on for several months before authorities raised concern. Finally this article gives us confirmation that because of the US's government's complaints terrorist accounts have been taken down. This article reports this news with little bias. It basically reports in a matter of fact way. However, some quote placements make the article have a rather sarcastic tone towards the action Twitter took. This is such an example, Islamic State is known to use social media to radicalise and lure recruits, prompting Twitter to "significantly" increase the size of its reviewing team. The quotations around significantly imply that the team didn’t really significantly increase but Twitter was exaggerating or was slow in taking action. However, the article does get better and is not filled with bias. The audience intended for this article is perhaps for those who use Twitter because they will display an interest in this. 

Citation:
"Twitter Suspends 125,000 'Terrorism' Accounts." 
Sky News. 2016 Sky Uk, 06 Feb. 2016. Web. 08 Feb. 2016.

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