Twitter Removes 1.6 Lakh Terror-Promoting Accounts

Twitter has removed 166,513 accounts that were promoting terror between the periods of July-December 2018. Twitter also claimed that it’s zero tolerance policy enforcement now is successful in reducing the use of the platform by the terrorist groups.

There is a reduction of 19 percent terror-related tweets in comparison to the previous reporting period (January-June 2018), according to Vijaya Gadde, Legal, Policy and Trust and Safety Lead at Twitter.

She wrote in a blog post recently, “Of those suspensions, 91 per cent consisted of accounts flagged by internal, purpose-built technological tools”.

As a precautionary measure, Twitter takes action at the account opening stage. Gadde also informed that they have received information requests from various countries of the world, as she wrote, “We have received government information requests from 86 countries. The US now comprises only 30 percent of global government information requests and 35 percent of all global accounts specified in the same category”.

The second highest volume of information requests were made by Japan which is 24 per cent of the global information requests followed by requests from the UK (13 per cent), India (6 per cent), Germany (6 per cent) and France (5 per cent), which together accounts for the 30% of all global information requests and 29% of all global accounts specified.

Gadde also said, “We received roughly 8 percent fewer global legal requests to remove content, impacting approximately 2 percent fewer accounts, compared to the previous reporting period”.

Twitter also received legal requests from 48 countries, including Bulgaria, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia and Slovenia specifying 27,283 accounts, for the first time.

“Nearly 74 percent of the total global volume of legal requests to remove content originated from only two countries: Russia and Turkey”, said the social networking company.

During the same reporting period, Twitter also removed a total of 456,989 suspicious accounts for violating rules related to child sexual exploitation, which is down by 6 percent from the previous reporting period.

Twitter also alerted that out of the suspected accounts, which are removed, 96 percent have surfaced, with a new combination of technology solutions, which includes PhotoDNA and internal proprietary tools.

As Gadde alerts, “Proactive challenges of accounts for spammy behaviour and platform manipulation have decreased by 17 percent in the second half of 2018 versus the first half -- totaling 194 million challenges in the second half of 2018”.

Around 75 percent of accounts were automatically removed after they failed in the account challenge process.