Twitter crackdown suspends 235,000 terrorism-related accounts.
While the ISIS have waged against war on all humanity, Twitter is fighting a twin war against two destructive forces–one obviously being the ISIS and ISIS supporters themselves, and the other a growing number of people who are spreading hate messages against all Muslims in general, holding them responsible for the acts of the ISIS. Twitter has declared that since February 235,000 accounts have been blocked by them for either of the two reasons.
Twitter Takes Strong Stand Against Online Extremism[/tweetthis]
Twitter says that there has been a considerable rise in Islamophobia ever since the recent attacks in European countries linked to ISIS. Most of these hate-tweets come from UK, France, Germany and Netherlands. Twitter began its crackdown on users who use the global platform to spread ideas that instigate communal tensions after the occurrences of incidents linked to Tweets.
Twitter has traditionally marketed itself as an open and free platform where people are allowed to express all kinds of opinions. However, users have abused this platform and off late, Twitter has accumulated a host of extremists, bullies and other such anti-social elements who have been abusing Twitter for all the wrong reasons.
Twitter was one of the main channels through which the ISIS spread its ideology and reached out to youth who could be easily brainwashed over to their cause. As such, it also served as a platform for recruitment into ISIS. Besides, Twitter was also used for threats of terrorism and other such acts that have been directly or indirectly been linked to violent attacks.
The website says that ever since their crackdown, the number of followers for accounts that spread hate messages have drastically reduced. Besides, Twitter also says that they have made considerable progress in disabling the blocked account holders to re-join Twitter any time soon. Twitter has made it clear that it is not going to compromise anything and is firm in its stance against the spreading of hate speeches and violence. The site even expressed its sorrow that people are venting out their anger on all Muslims worldwide rather than the terrorists. In addition, they have also affirmed their commitment to eliminate any possibility of future attacks happening through the means of their website.
#Twitter suspends 235,000 in online extremism crackdown https://t.co/ZwwWAiAw1Y via @POLITICOEurope #Fascism #Censorship #VoteTRUMP #EU #AP
— Donald Boudreau, PhD (@DonaldGBoudreau) August 19, 2016
Close to 365,000 accounts have been blocked by Twitter since last year, a majority of which was done between February and August alone. Twitter believes that the public space they provide should be utilized for things that are productive, and will not tolerate attempts to use it to spread hatred.