Twitter says it suspended more than 1.2 million users between August 2015 and December 2017 for promoting terrorism.
While that may be a staggering number, things are starting to look up. The total number of accounts suspended for “violations related to the promotion of terrorism” has decreased in recent months.
Between July and December 2017, roughly 270,000 accounts were permanently suspended. That’s down 8.4 percent from the previous reporting period and the second consecutive drop in the number of users who were suspended for that reason.
The information was provided as part of the biannual Twitter Transparency Report where the company also offered more data on content removed to comply with government regulations and expanded reporting on requests for account information.
“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,” wrote Jeremy Kessel, the global legal policy director at the social network.
Of the accounts suspended in the past reporting period, an impressive 93 percent were flagged by Twitter’s algorithms and 74 percent were deleted before posting a single tweet. Accounts removed for promoting terrorism account for less than .02 percent of the total Twitter suspensions, a 50 percent drop from previous reports.
Twitter started ramping up its efforts to combat terrorism after facing criticism for failing to prevent ISIS from establishing a presence on the site.