Twitter has taken additional steps to curb users who promote violent extremism and has suspended 235,000 accounts in the past six months, the company said in a blog post. The company added that it has significantly made progress in disrupting these users from returning to the platform. Twitter has also expanded review teams and has upgraded its tools and language capabilities. It also has collaborated with other social platforms, sharing information and best practices for identifying extremist content. In February, Twitter said that it had suspended 125,000 accounts since mid-2015. This brings the total count to 360,000. The company added that daily suspensions are up over 80% since last year, with spikes in suspensions immediately after terrorist attacks. Twitter will be publishing its efforts in regular updates in its transparency report. In addition to suspending the accounts, the social network has expanded partnerships with organizations such as Parle-moi d'Islam (France), Imams Online (UK), Wahid Foundation (Indonesia), The Sawab Center (UAE) and True Islam which counter terrorism. Rising abuse in the platform Twitter has acknowledged that increasing instances of abuse is a concern for the platform. "Abuse is not part of civil discourse. It shuts down conversation. It prevents us from understanding each other. Freedom of expression means little if we allow voices to be silenced because of fear of harassment if they speak up. No one deserves to be the target of abuse online, and it has no place on Twitter. We haven’t been good enough at ensuring that’s the case, and we must do better,”…
