Twitter Shut Down 125K Accounts Related to Terrorism

Twitter is an online social networking service that enables users to send and read short 140-character messages called "tweets". Registered users can read and post tweets, but those who are unregistered can only read them.

Twitter is providing new detail Friday about its efforts to fight ISIS and violent extremism online. In a tweet from the company's "@Policy" team, the social media company said it has stepped up its fight against violent extremism online. Since the middle of 2015, the company said, it has suspended over 125,000 accounts for threatening or promoting terrorist attacks — primarily related to support for ISIS.

That's the first time Twitter has revealed the scale of terrorist related activity on its service. The Brookings Institution estimated in a report last year that there were at least 46,000 Twitter accounts used by ISIS supporters. The new figure revealed by Twitter would suggest that either ISIS has drastically increased its presence on the service since that year, or that Twitter has gotten more effective in identifying terrorist accounts.