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Twitter Bans 270,000 Accounts For 'Promoting Terrorism' (theguardian.com)

According to Twitter's latest transparency report, the social media company removed more than 270,000 accounts around the world for promoting terrorism in the second half of 2017. The number of accounts permanently suspended for sharing what the firm called extremist content between July and December represents a drop for the second period in a row. The Guardian reports: The social network puts this down to "years of hard work making our site an undesirable place for those seeking to promote terrorism." Nick Pickles, Twitter UK's head of public policy, said: "The overwhelming majority of these accounts were detected by our own technology, with just 0.2% of the accounts we suspended in 2017 being flagged by the police." Almost 75% of accounts were suspended before they sent their first tweet, according to the report, and 93% were discovered by tools that Twitter engineers had built. Twitter is understood to also use a combination of US and EU lists of terrorist organizations as well as research from academics and experts to identify terrorists on its network. The number of reports of abusive behavior submitted by government representatives also dropped amid a marked change in the type of abusive behavior reported. Two-thirds of the 10,000 reports concerned violated rules over impersonation, with only 16% of the reports for harassment and 12% for hateful conduct. Harassment and hateful conduct each accounted for a third of reported accounts in the first half of 2017. Only a quarter of reports of abusive behavior submitted by government representatives were acted upon by Twitter, compared with 98% of reports relating to the "promotion of terrorism."

6 of 95 comments (clear)

  1. Really by countach · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Promoting terrorism, aka being politically right of Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong.

  2. Re:Useful??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And are all of the accounts actually promoting terrorism, or just shit that Twitter disagrees with?

  3. Without sending a tweet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Almost 75% of accounts were suspended before they sent their first tweet

    How can an account be banned for promoting anything before speaking publicly?

  4. Re:A lot of West-Wing head-scratching by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Ok. That's not fair. Trump definitely isn't a terrorist.

    That requires planning skiils.

    He he it's so cool to hate on Trump without stating any actual problem you have with him. Wow you're so fashionable!

  5. Re: Useful??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    NOTE: Feel free to mod me down since I'm an evil white Christian Conservative male, married to a real woman for 13 years and 5 kids including 3 adopted boys and a 30 plus year retired Field Engineer due to disability including an unknown neurological issues, chronic pain and some amazing big words that doctors are taught to say.

    Now that that's out of the way. It has been proven that Facebook, Twitter, and several other social media companies have been censoring Conservative opinions, regardless if you believe it or not. Its a proven fact and there are a few lawsuits pending over it. As a long term Slashdot follower and article contributor way back when, i have seen my comments constantly modded down simply because i dont follow the lefts agenda.

    Again mod me down or delete my comment as normal, you know who you are as do I.

    It used to be that you could post an opinion as a conservative on slashdot and other social media and have a respectable conversation on whatever subject. Now however i get a accused of being a racist, homophobic even though I've had gay roommates in the past yet im straight, anti science amd technology even though i grew up in the tech industry, i don't believe in the flat earth or the earth is 6000 years old and my favorite I'm anti climate change even though the earth has been in a constant state of change for the last 4.5 million years. I dont however believe in man made global warming and will continue to believe so until climate scientists release the real true unmodified data going back 50 plus years straight from the devices with zero and i mean zero uneditted or adjusted data. Of course good luck acquiring such data because ive been told repeatedly that the orignal data is no longer availble, i tried to get it.

    Personal Attacks and anti free speach against conservatives is real and on going problem even though the USA is supposed to be tolerant country and the left keeps claiming they accept everyone which is BS.

    Go back to your amazing utopia now where people dont question your logic or data.

  6. Re:A lot of West-Wing head-scratching by Mashiki · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Ok. That's not fair. Trump definitely isn't a terrorist.

    That requires planning skiils.

    Well that's quite true. The Obama presidency proved that you don't need planning skills to be a terrorist. He did a pretty good job of killing leaders of other nations with no clue on what to do after, or destabilize an entire area of the world to the point that millions try fleeing to Europe and cause mass destabilization of a second area of the world.

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    Om, nomnomnom...