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Twitter Bans 270,000 Accounts For 'Promoting Terrorism' (theguardian.com) 95

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."
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Twitter Bans 270,000 Accounts For 'Promoting Terrorism'

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  • Really (Score:3, Insightful)

    by countach ( 534280 ) on Friday April 06, 2018 @07:53PM (#56395837)

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

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Why would an organisation that has C*Os from the centre and centre-right do that?

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      There are literal Nazis on Twitter, and they don't get banned because they avoid breaking the rules.

      There is zero credible evidence of political bias from Twitter in relation to account bans.

      • Really. Please tell us why Sargon of Akkad was banned then.

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Posting hard core pornography was the last straw after numerous ToS violations.

          • by Mashiki ( 184564 )

            Hard core pornography? You mean the same stuff you can find all over twitter. Or is it because he posted gay pornography at alt-right figures who were attacking him, and their response was mass-flagging his account?

            But somehow, people like arthur chu and kristi winters are still on twitter despite their numerous ToS violations that twitter doesn't seem to care about.

  • by Anonymous Coward

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

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

    • Easy list (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      They were registered in the domains...
      @gop.com
      @rnc.com
      and
      @maga.com

      No need to wait for anything before Twitter decided it was terrorism. I wonder if they accidentally deleted any accounts belonging to vegans, they may want to increase security if they did.

    • by SeaFox ( 739806 )

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

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

      I hear Tom Cruise and some drugged-out ladies in a pool were involved.

    • would be a good start. Following pro terrorist accounts exclusively. In otherwords, shill accounts designed to raise the visibility of the accounts that post.
  • whatever diversity you got
  • John Bolton: I don't know Mr. President. My Twitter account doesn't appear to be working either.
    • Ok. That's not fair. Trump definitely isn't a terrorist.

      That requires planning skiils.
      • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        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!

        • by Anonymous Coward

          He he it's so rebellious being a Trump sheep! Strong conservative values like porn stars, deficits, lies and corruption! Financial dependency on the elites! Tax cuts for the rich! Military marches! Super PAC kickbacks! Wow you're so cool! Bah bah.

      • Even if he had them, Twitter wouldn't get rid of him anyway. He's probably responsible for at least a double digit percentage of their traffic. They couldn't quit each other if they wanted to.
      • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

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

        Errorist.

      • 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.

        • [Obama] 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

          That's a bunch of bunk. Obama did NOT start the civil wars, and they raged on with and without dictator removal. Keeping (Syria) versus removing original dictator (Libya) made no difference: both countries went to shit. If the Middle East civil wars had any single cause, it was the harsh economic crash that began under

          • by Mashiki ( 184564 )

            That's a bunch of bunk. Obama did NOT start the civil wars, and they raged on with and without dictator removal. Keeping (Syria) versus removing original dictator (Libya) made no difference: both countries went to shit. If the Middle East civil wars had any single cause, it was the harsh economic crash that began under W's watch.

            Gadaffi: No threat to the US, openly welcomed inspectors, had a GDP surplus, was honoring stipulations on trade agreements. Was reforming country into quasi-secular areas with internal government bodies. Post-Hillary and Obama economic collapse, ruin, destruction, and slave markets. The only reason ISIS hasn't managed to get a foothold was because under Gadaffi individual areas were managed like states and had their own internal controls and worked together. Syria on the other hand is far, far, far more

            • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

              Gadaffi: No threat to the US, openly welcomed inspectors, had a GDP surplus, was honoring stipulations on trade agreements.

              A civil war begun and he started mass killings of his own people, which made the civil war all the more heated. US didn't start the civil war.

              You know what the difference between Libya and Syria is right now? Syria is more stable.

              You are comparing shit to puke.

              • by Mashiki ( 184564 )

                A civil war begun and he started mass killings of his own people, which made the civil war all the more heated. US didn't start the civil war.

                A civil war didn't begin, and he didn't start mass killings of his own. Islamic extremists started a war, which became a civil war along sectarian lines.

                You are comparing shit to puke.

                Your actual ignorance of the world is astounding.

      • New evidence indicates the Pulse Nightclub shooting was planned out about as well as one of Spanky's executive orders. So no, terrorism doesn't require good planning. Recently, a white supremacist in Wisconsin blew himself up, so terrorism doesn't even require intelligence above the level of a moron. Even Spanky could qualify.
  • Is it Ok to hate certain white hood-wearers? How about those with red stars and hammer-and-sickle [twitter.com]?

    • Twitter can't go down that path; if they start banning people for hate speech, they would inevitably have to ban president Spanky to be consistent.
      • by mi ( 197448 )

        Twitter can't go down that path

        Yet, the write-up claims, the did... Hence my question...

  • WTF, whispered the Donald

  • Which is scary. Who thinks the Twits In Charge (TIC) have suddenly identified a few hundred thousand accounts in the week or so since Facebook had their business model thrown in their face?

    No, the twits came up with a list of bad words and bad origins and made 2 teams, where each got really good with perl and Regexps shooting at different goals.
  • by Anonymous Coward

    Twitter banned people for all kinds of stupid shit, but promoting terrorism always seemed ok to them. I always thought those terror accounts were CIA fronts or something because why else where they allowed to stay up for years promoting ISIS?

  • As long as it's not illegal discrimination based on age, race, religion, gender, disability, medial condition, or sexual orientation Twitter can arbitrarily decide to or not to do business with anyone they want.
    • by elrous0 ( 869638 )

      What if your religion is extremist?

      • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
        The religion of war can cover its propaganda under as freedom of religion.
        The teaching are perfect and direct from god.
        A faith cant be changed. The faith is spread by war as part of that faith.
  • I thought not...
  • Have they banned Trump's account for inciting violence yet?

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