Tech

Twitter bans 360K accounts for supporting terrorism

Twitter has suspended 360,000 accounts since mid-2015 for violating its policy banning users who support terrorism and violent extremism.

The San Francisco-based firm said in a blog post on Thursday that it had also made progress in preventing users who were suspended from immediately returning to the platform with different accounts, which has been a problem in the past.

The company said its rate of daily suspensions is up 80 percent since last year, although it did not provide specific numbers.

The suspensions usually spike following terrorist attacks, when sickos celebrate the carnage.

Twitter conceded there is no magic formula for identifying extremist accounts, and, like other social-media companies, it uses a variety of tools, including spam-fighting technology, automatic identification and reports from users to fight abuse.

Twitter had been pilloried for not doing enough to keep extremist groups, such as ISIS, from using the messaging service to draw supporters — and even potential attackers.

Last week, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit against Twitter that accused it of supporting ISIS by allowing the jihadis to sign up.

The judge agreed with Twitter that it cannot be held liable because federal law protects service providers that merely offer platforms for speech, without creating the speech itself.

The site is also introducing two features that will give users more control: an option to limit notifications and a “quality filter” that removes things like duplicate tweets and bot-generated content.

The changes prompted a jokey response from serial sexter Anthony Weiner, whose political career imploded after a series of social-media sex scandals.

“Why do I have a feeling I had something to do with this?” he tweeted.