Twitter keeps going strong on its “anti-terrorism journey”

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Twitter just recently announced that the online social networking service since February 2016 has suspended 235,000 accounts that have been used to promote terrorism. So far, there are over 360,000 accounts Twitter has suspended since summer of 2015 quickly raising the percentage of suspended accounts immediately after several terrorist attacks took place last year.

Three days ago U.K. Lawmakers have “blamed” Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter for being used as 'Recruiting Platforms for Terrorism.' “Huge corporations like Google, Facebook and Twitter, with their billion dollar incomes, are consciously failing to tackle this threat and passing the buck by hiding behind their supranational status, despite knowing that their sites are being used by the instigators of terror,” according to Keith Vaz, chairman of the parliamentary committee.

Twitter is already making progress by suspending and preventing the suspended accounts from returning but there is a lot of controversy that surrounds the way Twitter’s anti-terrorism algorithm works.

“Twitter uses technology such as proprietary spam-fighting tools to supplement reports from users. Over the past six months, those tools helped identify more than one third of the 235,000 accounts suspended. Twitter's global public policy team has expanded partnerships with organizations working to counter violent extremism online, including True Islam in the United States; Parle-moi d'Islam in France; Imams Online in the UK; the Wahid Foundation in Indonesia; and the Sawab Center in the UAE,” according to an article published by Tech News World a few days ago.

YouTube and Facebook have also began their “anti-terrorism journey” by blocking and removing accounts that promote and support terrorism. While the technology used for this mission is still on its first steps, many people have been questioning the technology and “accusing” it for limiting people’s freedom of speech. They go “against the concepts of freedom of speech and the Internet,” Jim McGregor, a principal analyst at Tirias Research said for Tech News World. “On the other hand, you have to consider the threat posed by these organizations. Is giving them an open platform for promotion and communication any different than putting a gun in their hands?,” he added.

Last year Muslim teen Ahmed Mohamed, who got arrested for showing his teacher a clock he invented, got support by several tech giants including Twitter, Google, Microsoft, and many more.

The ‘hoax bomb’ the student was accused of building inside a pencil case, was in fact just an alarm clock, which according to Mohamed’s father, Ahmed had been using for some time to wake up in the morning. Even though Mohamed  told the local police that his invention was just a clock, the teen was handcuffed anyway and wasn’t allowed to call anyone, while his father was not allowed to speak to his son or look at the supposedly “hoax bomb’ until the police cleared the situation.

Image Source: www.politicalcartoons.com


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