It is no secret that terror groups use social media sites like Facebook and Twitter in order to recruit and broadcast their propaganda messages. And over the past few years, there has been a concern with some who have wondered why these corporations don't seem to do a little more when it comes to shutting these accounts down.
According to these terror groups themselves, they believe that at least half of the war they are waging is done so through the media and therefore they hope that people around the world are going to pick-up on their propaganda content, download it, and distribute it to others.
Twitter has for some time now been said to be the preferred platform for the Islamic State. And according to one criminology student who sought to investigate the spread of terrorist propaganda throughout social media for her PhD thesis, Twitter is much slower than other corporations to intervene and suspend any accounts that seek to spread this type of propaganda.
It's estimated that hundreds of thousands of accounts have been created in order to try and promote and spread terror propaganda online.
The main reason that they are said to be using these accounts is so that they can recruit individuals and also raise money for their causes, followed by their need to spread their pro-violence message. Those in these terror groups who are interested in spreading their hate, are already well-versed in trying to avoid any filters that are currently in place to prevent them from posting their hate speech.
It's alleged that individuals associated with these terror groups are increasingly abandoning Twitter in order to use the new encrypted messaging app Telegram.
Just last year Twitter announced that they had shut down over 360,000 different accounts that had been connected to terrorism. And this week it was announced again that Twitter had located and banned at least another 63,000 accounts of individuals who it says were advocating for violence.
The corporation is private so it is free to decide what sort of content it is going to allow to be posted onto its platform. Their move to try and stop providing a platform for terror groups to spread their messages is no doubt pleasing to many. But it almost feels like a game of whack-a-mole, where you shut a few down and quickly have new ones start up.
Pics:
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neurogadget
Medium
Sources:
http://nouvelles.umontreal.ca/en/article/2017/02/10/phd-student-investigates-islamic-state-propaganda/
https://www.wired.com/2016/08/twitter-says-suspended-360000-suspected-terrorist-accounts-year/
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-twitter-extremism-idUSKBN16S1Z4
http://business.financialpost.com/fp-tech-desk/twitter-inc-says-it-has-shut-down-more-than-636000-accounts-to-tackle-violent-extremism
http://www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/national/article/Twitter-suspends-more-than-375000-accounts-in-six-months-to-tackle-extremism-cf088ac5-8fce-4a17-9fc3-5d9fc4e16eaf-ds
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