Twitter suspends 125,000 accounts linked to terrorism - mostly related to ISIS

Twitter has revealed that it has suspended over 125,000 accounts linked to terrorism.

In a post entitled "Combating Violent Extremism", the social networking giant state that its rules make it clear that any behaviour that promotes terrorism is not permitted, and they have increased the size of the teams that review such accounts.

"As the nature of the terrorist threat has changed, so has our ongoing work in this area. Since the middle of 2015 alone, we've suspended over 125,000 accounts for threatening or promoting terrorist acts, primarily related to ISIS," the post reads.

"We also look into other accounts similar to those reported and leverage proprietary spam-fighting tools to surface other potentially violating accounts for review by our agents. We have already seen results, including an increase in account suspensions and this type of activity shifting off of Twitter."

Twitter also noted that it cooperates with law enforcement entities "when appropriate" and that they partner with organisations working to counter extremist content online, such as People Against Violent Extremism (PAVE) and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.

"As many experts and other companies have noted, there is no 'magic algorithm' for identifying terrorist content on the Internet, so global online platforms are forced to make challenging judgement calls based on very limited information and guidance," it concludes.

"In spite of these challenges, we will continue to aggressively enforce our Rules in this area, and engage with authorities and other relevant organisations to find solutions to this critical issue and promote powerful counter-speech narratives."

Meanwhile, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey denied reports of a timeline algorithm change that saw #RIPTwitter trend with many users worried that it was about to become a lot more like Facebook.