Twitter has now blocked more than 1 million terrorism accounts from its service.

The social network on Thursday published a blog post detailing the highlights from its 12th biannual Twitter Transparency Report, where it reveals information about accounts it’s removed, inquiries from governments, and data requests. In that post, Twitter revealed that it removed nearly 275,000 terrorist accounts between July 1, 2017 and December 31, 2017. While that was down 8.4% compared to the prior period, the company revealed that it has now banned more than 1.2 million terrorist accounts from its service since August 2015.

In the blog post, the company said that it’s been working for years at making Twitter “an undesirable place for those seeking to promote terrorism.” The company added that online terrorist-related activity is now “increasingly shifting away from Twitter.”

Get Data Sheet, Fortune’s technology newsletter



Like other major tech companies, Twitter shares transparency reports to shed light on what kinds of content is on its network and why certain accounts were removed. In some cases, those accounts are suspended or data accessed because of legal orders or warrants. In others, accounts simply violate Twitter’s terms of service and are removed.

Terrorist organizations have long used social media and other popular services to spread propaganda and recruit new members into their organizations. And although Twitter was quick to celebrate its terrorist-related suspensions, the sheer number of removals in the last quarter, alone, suggest the service is still a sought-after spot for terrorists to land.

According to Twitter, 93% of the terrorist accounts were spotted by its own technologies and nearly three-quarters of accounts were banned before they could post their first tweet. Governments stepped in to alert Twitter to terrorist accounts in 0.2% of cases in the second half of 2017. </s> Twitter has put out its latest Transparency Report providing an update on how many terrorist accounts it has suspended on its platform — with a cumulative 1.2 million+ suspensions since August 2015.

During the reporting period of July 1, 2017 through December 31, 2017 — for this, Twitter’s 12th Transparency Report — the company says a total of 274,460 accounts were permanently suspended for violations related to the promotion of terrorism.

“This is down 8.4% from the volume shared in the previous reporting period and is the second consecutive reporting period in which we’ve seen a drop in the number of accounts being suspended for this reason,” it writes. “We continue to see the positive, significant impact of years of hard work making our site an undesirable place for those seeking to promote terrorism, resulting in this type of activity increasingly shifting away from Twitter.”

Six months ago the company claimed big wins in squashing terrorist activity on its platform — attributing drops in reports of pro-terrorism accounts then to the success of in-house tech tools in driving terrorist activity off its platform (and perhaps inevitably rerouting it towards alternative platforms — Telegram being chief among them, according to experts on online extremism).

At that time Twitter reported a total of 299,649 pro-terrorism accounts had been suspended — which it said was a 20 per cent drop on figures reported for July through December 2016.

So the size of the drops are also shrinking. Though it’s suggesting that’s because it’s winning the battle to discourage terrorists from trying in the first place.

For its latest reporting period, ending December 2017, Twitter says 93% of the accounts were flagged by its internal tech tools — with 74% of those also suspended before their first tweet, i.e. before they’d been able to spread any terrorist propaganda.

Which means that around a quarter of the pro-terrorist accounts did manage to get out at least one terror tweet.

This proportion is essentially unchanged since the last report period (when Twitter reported suspending 75% before their first tweet) — so whatever tools it’s using to automate terror account identification and blocking appear to be in a steady state, rather than gaining in ability to pre-filter terrorist content.

Twitter also specifies that government reports of violations related to the promotion of terrorism represent less than 0.2% of all suspensions in the most recent reporting period — or 597 to be exact.

As with its prior transparency report, a far larger number of Twitter accounts are being reported by governments for “abusive behavior” — which refers to long-standing problems on Twitter’s platform such as hate speech, racism, misogyny and trolling.

And in December a Twitter policy staffer was roasted by UK MPs during a select committee session after the company was again shown failing to remove violent, threatening and racist tweets — which committee staffers had reported months earlier in that case.

Twitter’s latest Transparency Report specifies that governments reported 6,254 Twitter accounts for abusive behavior — yet the company only actioned a quarter of these reports.

That’s still up on the prior reporting period, though, when it reported actioning a paltry 12% of these type of reports.

The issue of abuse and hate speech on online platforms generally has rocketed up the political agenda in recent years, especially in Europe — where Germany now has a tough new law to regulate takedowns.

Platforms’ content moderation policies certainly remain a bone of contention for governments and lawmakers.

Last month the European Commission set out a new rule of thumb for social media platforms — saying it wants them to take down illegal content within an hour of it being reported.

This is not legislation yet, but the threat of EU-wide laws being drafted to regulate content takedowns remains a discussion topic — to encourage platforms to improve performance voluntarily.

Where terrorist content specifically is concerned, the Commission has also been pushing for increased used by tech firms of what it calls “proactive measures”, including “automated detection”.

And in February the UK government also revealed it had commissioned a local AI firm to build an extremist content blocking tool — saying it could decide to force companies to use it.

So political pressure remains especially high on that front.

Returning to abusive content, Twitter’s report specifies that the majority of the tweets and accounts reported to it by governments which it did remove violated its rules in the following areas: impersonation (66%), harassment (16%), and hateful conduct (12%).

This is an interesting shift on the mix from the last reported period when Twitter said content was removed for: harassment (37%), hateful conduct (35%), and impersonation (13%).

It’s difficult to interpret exactly what that development might mean. One possibility is that impersonation could cover disinformation agents, such as Kremlin bots, which Twitter has being suspending in recent months as part of investigations into election interference — an issue that’s been shown to be a problem across social media, from Facebook to Tumblr.

Governments may also have become more focused on reporting accounts to Twitter that they believe are wrappers for foreign agents to spread false information to try to meddle with democratic processes.

In January, for example, the UK government announced it would be setting up a civil service unit to combat state-led disinformation campaigns.

And removing an account that’s been identified as a fake — with the help of government intelligence — is perhaps easier for Twitter than judging whether a particular piece of robust speech might have crossed the line into harassment or hate speech.

Judging the health of conversations on its platform is also something the company recently asked outsiders to help it with. So it doesn’t appear overly confident in making those kind of judgement calls. </s> Twitter Inc. on Thursday, April 5, said that it has suspended 1.21 million accounts between August 2015 and end of 2017 on grounds of "violations related to the promotion of terrorism". It also added that the number of such accounts was seeing a drop.

The social media said 2,74,460 of these accounts were suspended in late 2017 which was 8.4 per cent less from the previous reporting period and the second consecutive period in which Twitter witnessed a reduction in the number of accounts suspended owing to the same reason. The microblogging site said this in a blog post which covered its 12th biannual "transparency report".

It was also informed by Twitter that 74 per cent of the accounts covered in the latest period of reporting were suspended even before the posting the first tweet.

Twitter expressed a sense of satisfaction saying its hard work over the years in making the social media platform an unsuitable place "for those seeking to promote terrorism" paid off and now the tendency has gone down.

It also said that a majority of the accounts suspended in late 2017 "were flagged by internal, proprietary tools" and government's reports on such violations accounted for only 0.2 per cent of all suspensions.

Twitter began its 'cleanliness drive' in 2014 after facing criticism that it wasn't doing enough to stop people who were using it with sinister designs of promoting extremism.

In December 2015, after 14 people were massacred in a shooting at San Bernardino, California, the then US president Barack Obama approached Twitter and other tech companies with the plea to make it difficult for the terrorists to use technology to evade justice.

Twitter also faced the wrath of the kin of the victims of the 2015 attack in May last year along with Google and Facebook as they filed a federal lawsuit against the tech giants accusing them of purposefully backing the Islamic State terrorist outfit.

For breaking news & Instant updates throughout the day </s> Twitter said Thursday that it suspended 1.21 million accounts from its social media service between August 2015 and the end of 2017 for “violations related to the promotion of terrorism.”

Twitter also said the suspensions were on a downswing.

They included 274,460 suspended accounts in the second half of 2017, which were down 8.4 percent from the previous reporting period and the second consecutive period “in which we’ve seen a drop in the number of accounts being suspended for this reason,” Twitter said in a blog post covering its 12th biannual “transparency report.”

Twitter also said 74 percent of the accounts involved in the latest reporting period “were suspended before their first tweet.”

“We continue to see the positive, significant impact of years of hard work making our site an undesirable place for those seeking to promote terrorism, resulting in this type of activity increasingly shifting away from Twitter,” the company said.

Twitter said that 93 percent of the 274,460 accounts suspended in the last half of 2017 “were flagged by (the company’s) internal, proprietary tools” and that government reports of such violations accounted for only 0.2 percent of all suspensions.

Twitter began mass suspensions of such accounts in early 2014 as the San Francisco company responded to criticism that it wasn’t doing enough to crack down on users who promote or are linked to terrorist groups.

In December 2015, after the mass shooting in San Bernardino that left 14 dead, President Obama called on Twitter and other tech leaders to “make it harder for terrorists to use technology to escape from justice.”

Last year, relatives of the victims of the attack filed a federal lawsuit against Twitter, Google and Facebook, accusing the tech giants of knowingly supporting Islamic State and its extremist agenda.

The lawsuit contends the companies allowed Islamic State to build an outsize online presence and propagate its extremist beliefs and draw recruits, such as the couple who carried out the attack on the San Bernardino social services center.

In the fourth quarter of last year, Twitter reported 330 million average monthly users of its platform overall. </s> Twitter has announced that it banned 274,460 accounts for promoting terrorism over the last six months of 2017.

 The number of bans reported in the twice yearly transparency report marks a 8.4% decrease on the six months previous as part of what Twitter celebrated as “the positive, significant impact of years of hard work”.

 As with its report last year, the majority of these accounts (93%) were automatically removed by the social media company’s internal tools, and 74% were suspended before their first tweet.

 “Government reports of violations related to the promotion of terrorism represent less than 0.2% of all suspensions in the most recent reporting period,” Twitter claimed – reflecting a 50% reduction in reports compared to the previous six months.

The bans follow immense pressure by governments across the world in response to terrorist attacks, with social media companies being accused of not working hard enough to prevent the spread of online extremism.

 Last year, Home Secretary Amber Rudd floated the idea that people who repeatedly viewed terrorist content online could be jailed for up to 15 years.

 In the face of this pressure, technology and social media companies have begun investing huge amounts of money to combat extremism.

 Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter have announced funding for various projects as they seek to deflect regulatory interest.

 In the UK, the Government is introducing its ‘Internet Safety Strategy’ which could see social media companies pay an additional tax to pay for measures to address cyber bulling and extremism. </s> Twitter announced Friday that it has suspended more than 1,000 new accounts linked to Russian-controlled accounts which shared information meant to interfere with the 2016 presidential election.

In a post on its blog, the social media platform said it had suspended 1,062 new accounts linked to “a number of accounts that were potentially connected to a propaganda effort by a Russian government-linked organization known as the Internet Research Agency.”

In addition to them being taken down, Twitter also said it will send email notifications to 677,775 people in the U.S. that interacted with any of these accounts either by following, retweeting or liking a post during the campaign.

Twitter also found 13,512 Russian-related accounts that tweeted out 50,258 posts during the election period.

The blog post shared some examples of the tweets that may have found their way into some users' feeds during that time.

One tweet read, “Cops have killed 68 people in 22 days since #Kaepernick started protesting. 68 in 22 days… have no words #KeithLamontScott.”

Another featured a picture of former FBI Director James Comey with the words “Resign Now” and the caption “RT if you also think that FBI Director James Comey should be impeached for blocking the investigation & abetting a criminal.”

The findings come just a week after Twitter representatives testified before the Senate Commerce Committee, where they were grilled over Russia’s and other extremists’ use of the platform. </s> Twitter has announced that it banned 274,460 accounts for promoting terrorism over the last six months of 2017.

The number of bans reported in the twice yearly transparency report marks a 8.4% decrease on the six months previous as part of what Twitter celebrated as "the positive, significant impact of years of hard work".

As with its report last year, the majority of these accounts (93%) were automatically removed by the social media company's internal tools, and 74% were suspended before their first tweet.

"Government reports of violations related to the promotion of terrorism represent less than 0.2% of all suspensions in the most recent reporting period," Twitter claimed - reflecting a 50% reduction in reports compared to the previous six months.

:: Are tech firms doing enough on terror?

The bans follow immense pressure by governments across the world in response to terrorist attacks, with social media companies being accused of not working hard enough to prevent the spread of online extremism.

Last year, Home Secretary Amber Rudd floated the idea that people who repeatedly viewed terrorist content online could be jailed for up to 15 years.

In the face of this pressure, technology and social media companies have begun investing huge amounts of money to combat extremism.

Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter have announced funding for various projects as they seek to deflect regulatory interest.

In the UK, the Government is introducing its 'Internet Safety Strategy' which could see social media companies pay an additional tax to pay for measures to address cyber bulling and extremism.

In 2015, the then director of the FBI, James Comey, claimed Islamic State was using social media to "crowdsource terrorism" and said Twitter was used "to sell murder".

In Germany, a law which came into effect in 2018 is forcing social media companies to remove hate speech or receive serious regulatory action.

In response, Human Rights Watch warned that the law could "lead to unaccountable, overbroad censorship" and advocated for it to be reversed.

Politicians in the UK are considering whether a similar law should be implemented in Britain, although civil rights groups have warned against it.

Twitter noted these concerns, stating: "With the passage of new legislation and ongoing regulatory discussions taking place around the world about the future of public discourse online, we are seeing a potential chilling effect with regards to freedom of expression.

"According to Human Rights Watch, the wave of regulatory pressure in Europe and beyond is setting an emerging precedent and creating a 'domino effect' as 'governments around the world increasingly look to restrict online speech by forcing social media companies to act as their censors'.

"As regulators explore further potential restrictions, transparency is one of the most important ways we can continue to protect freedom of expression."

The social media company said it was proud of its "industry-leading policies regarding transparency about content restrictions" which included "uploading actioned requests to withhold content to Lumen" in order to prevent censorship taking place.

Lumen is "an independent database that collects and analyses removal requests for content online" and Twitter said it uploads most of its withheld content requests there unless it receives a court order prohibiting it from doing so.

In practice this means investigations into terrorist content and serious crime will not be publicised - but other forms of legal demands will be publicly recorded. </s> Twitter has announced that it has removed thousands of accounts in its latest purge of bad actors on the site and released information relating to state-backed content.

A Catalonian pro-independence party, Iran's government and a commercial entity in Venezuela have all been connected to "coordinated manipulation" on Twitter that breaks the social platform's rules.

Russia's notorious Internet Research Agency (IRA) also gets a mention, albeit briefly, which Twitter attributes to "increased information sharing between industry peers and law enforcement".

Thursday's report follows on from Twitter's mass release in October of content associated with "potential information operations" since 2016.

The IRA featured heavily in the October report, with Twitter releasing details of 3,841 accounts traced back to the Kremlin-linked troll farm.

But the most recent report ties the IRA to just four accounts, which have since been removed from the platform.

Euronews has read through the rest of Twitter's recent report and has broken it down for you below.

Previous reports from cybersecurity company FireEye and Twitter have revealed Iranian-linked accounts taking part in inauthentic behaviour, but both companies distanced themselves from blaming the state.

In Thursday's report, however, Twitter said it had identified 4,779 accounts that were all "associated with — or directly backed by — the Iranian government".

Twitter then broke the activity down into three subsets — 1,666 accounts tweeted news content promoting Iran's diplomatic and geostrategic views, 248 accounts directly engaged in conversation on Israel, and a further 2,865 accounts took on fake personas and tweeted about politics and social issues in Iran and around the world.

The latter example was the subject of a thread posted last month by Yoel Roth, Twitter's head of site integrity, who said the accounts had replied to users, including politicians and journalists.

He added: "Several of the accounts falsely represented themselves as media based in the United States and claimed affiliation without outlets like the New York Daily News, Newsday and the Seattle Times."

Twitter says it has removed 130 suspected fake accounts "directly associated" to the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC), a prominent party in the Catalan independence movement. One of these accounts alone had more than 13,000 followers.

The pro-independence ERC won a record number of 15 seats in Spain's parliament following elections in April, which marked the first time since the 1930s that it garnered the most support out of all Catalan parties.

Its leader, Oriol Junqueras, is the former vice-president of Catalonia, and has been in jail since 2017 over the region's failed declaration of independence.

His trial in Madrid ended this week after four months — he could face a 25-year jail sentence if convicted.

The 50-year-old was also elected to European Parliament in last month's election.

According to Twitter's report, the ERC-linked accounts were found to be fake profiles spreading content about the banned 2017 Catalan referendum.

They had been "created with the intent to inorganically influence the conversation in politically advantageous ways," the report said.

This is not the first instance of influencing campaigns uncovered in Catalonia.

Spain's El Pais newspaper released an investigation in 2017 that said the IRA had "used the Catalan crisis as a way to deepen divisions within Europe".

The ERC has not yet responded to Euronews' request for comment on the report from Twitter.

In January, Twitter said it had removed 1,196 accounts it believed was part of a government-backed campaign targeting Venezuelan audiences, and a further 764 accounts it believed were linked to the IRA.

But in Thursday's report, the social network said it had uncovered a further 33 accounts (on top of the 764 from January), in a campaign that it now believed originated from inside Venezuela itself.

It said: "While there were initial indications that these accounts were associated with the Russian Internet Research Agency, our further analysis suggests that they were operated by a commercial entity originating in Venezuela."

"We are sharing further data on this group to update the public on our attribution efforts."

The social platform said it believes such activity from government-linked actors, who are "knowingly trying to manipulate and distort the public conversation", is in the public interest, and should, therefore, be published.

"People and organisations with the advantages of institutional power and which consciously abuse our service are not advancing healthy discourse but are actively working to undermine it," the company added. </s> Twitter announced that more Russia-backed troll accounts were active during the 2016 US presidential election than previously thought.

The social network also announced that it plans to notify some 677,775 users who either followed, retweeted or liked a tweet from the more than 50,000 Russia-backed Twitter accounts during the 2016 election cycle.

Twitter has been conducting an ongoing investigation into its own role in the spread of extremist content and "fake news" during the 2016 election.

The investigation unearthed an additional 1,062 accounts associated with the Internet Research Agency (IRA), and 13,512 more Russia-based bots than were previously found. The company now believes a total of 3,814 accounts were associated with the IRA, and 50,258 accounts were automated bots linked to Russia.

Going forward, Twitter says it plans to clamp down on usage of the Twitter API, which enables users to perform coordinated actions across multiple accounts in services like Tweetdeck. Twitter will limit the coordination abilities of the API, revamp its developer onboarding process with a focus on policy enforcement, and enforce rules on the appropriate use of bots and automation.

Twitter also plans to bolster investments in machine-learning technology that will help the company "detect and mitigate the effect on users of fake, coordinated, and automated account activity."

Despite the rise in Russia-backed accounts, Twitter insists the total lot accounts for just "two one-hundredths of a percent (0.016%) of the total accounts on Twitter at the time."

"However any such activity represents a challenge to democratic societies everywhere, and we're committed to continuing to work on this important issue," the company said.

In an effort of transparency, Twitter is sending out email notifications to the more than 600,000 users who interacted with content from any of the of the since-suspended Russia-linked accounts.

In the past few months, technology giants have faced increased pressure from US and UK governments, and others, to work on curbing terrorist and extremist content online.

Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, and YouTube pledged to build a shared database of digital fingerprints of extremist material of content removed from their services in the hope of making it more difficult to share.

In October, Twitter banned media sites Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik from advertising on its platform after determining that both Kremlin-backed news outlets attempted to interfere with and disrupt the 2016 election.

Looking ahead to the 2018 election, Twitter says plans to better coordinate with federal and state election officials to ensure verification of major party candidates. The company also plans to weed out networks of malicious automation via improvements to its anti-spam technology, and will also "monitor trends and spikes in conversations relating to the 2018 elections for potential manipulation activity."

After facing scrutiny for enabling the spread of "fake news," Twitter cracks down on a campaign ad from a Republican congresswoman for its "inflammatory" content."

The role that social media platforms played in the 2016 US presidential election is being looked into as part of a broader investigation into president Donald Trump's alleged collusion with Russia.

Twitter suspends 299,000 accounts linked to terrorism in past six months

The company said 75 percent of the infringing accounts were suspended before their first tweet.
Twitter announces the suspension of 1.2 million terror-linked accounts since 2015.