SecureWorld News

Thanks to Big Data: 1.2 Million Terrorist Accounts Shut Down

Written by SecureWorld News Team | Thu | Apr 5, 2018 | 4:34 PM Z

Twitter released its bi-annual transparency report today, and says it has now shut down more than 1.2 million accounts linked to terrorists in just three years.

Twitter's big data and analytics at work

The 1.2 million accounts includes more than a quarter-million accounts the company permanently suspended from July 1 to December 31, 2017.

And Twitter's own data and predictive analytics work is largely responsible for the success of this program:

"Of those 274,460 accounts suspended in the last reporting period, 93% were flagged by internal, proprietary tools, and 74% of those accounts were suspended before their first Tweet."

How does Twitter define terrorist or terrorism?

Twitter does not say, exactly, how it defines terrorism or terrorist accounts. But in past updates, it painted the picture like this:

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