Twitter has built a whole new brand for itself by protecting the people in cyberspace all across the globe. Cyber security was seen as a top priority when it used its tools to take down more than 376,000 pro-terrorist accounts between July 2016 and December 2016. "Given the concerning global trend of various governments cracking down on press freedom, we want to shine brighter light on these requests," Twitter said in a statement by its director of global legal policy Jeremy Kessel.
It first confirmed its efforts to battle extremism in 2015 and has since then doubled those efforts within the past year.
In February 2016, the company announced many various initiatives it has taken to promote cyber security. These include attending government-sponsored events, engaging in outside partnerships with other organizations and even providing a more in-depth training program for its own policy team.
Twitter has become the social media platform that conquers violent pro-terrorist content at its source then diminishes it before terrorism is proliferated anywhere else.
More than 600,000 linked to extremism
According to a bi-annual report released on Tuesday, this social media giant has suspended at least 636,248 accounts so far for promoting terrorism between August 2015 and December 2016. Twitter currently has an estimated 319 million users who are active monthly.
The government transparency report that was provided marks the first time Twitter has ever addressed its efforts to fight terrorism. As it continues to release more data, it also acknowledges in the report for the first time exactly how many federal requests it receives to remove certain content posted by journalists and news organizations.
Preventing cyber terrorism
Twitter's team has been using artificial intelligence this whole time to primarily identify terrorism-related content. Twitter only received 88 requests from the government between June 2016 and December 2016. 74 percent of all the accounts suspended during that time were found with simple spam-fighting tools used internally within the company.
Many other social media networks are beginning to follow suit with using this same approach to identify terrorist accounts and combat their extremism. Emma Llanso, director of the Center for Democracy and Technology's Free Expression Project, has stated, "One of the biggest challenges in pursuing a take-down approach to dealing with terrorist propaganda is that it is so easy for a new account to pop up."
Although Twitter has declined to elaborate on exactly what tools its company is currently using, it's certainly proving effective in removing accounts of terrorism and terrorist propaganda from cyberspace.
