Twitter touts progress in curbing terrorist content

Twitter says it is making progress in weeding out terrorism and abuse on its platform in its latest transparency report.

The company says it has seen an 80 percent reduction in accounts reported by the government over terror concerns in the latter half of 2016, which it attributes to its own work preemptively keeping such accounts off its site.

Twitter says that, overall, 95 percent of accounts it removed for terrorist content were the result of its own tools and that government reports were only responsible for 1 percent of suspended accounts.

Twitter and other tech companies have taken heat from governments, which say the platforms help connect terrorists and spread propaganda.

{mosads}After last week’s terror attack in London, British Prime Minister Theresa May renewed her call for companies to crack down on terrorism on their platforms.

“Loser terrorists must be dealt with in a much tougher manner. The internet is their main recruitment tool which we must cut off & use better!” President Trump added on Twitter after the attack.

Some critics have pushed back on calls for tighter regulation of social media.

Twitter noted that it expanded its terms of service report beyond terrorist content. New categories of concern include abusive behavior, copyright and trademark.

Even though the company says it has been focused on keeping pro-terrorist content off its site, Twitter notes the largest amount of content flagged to it by the government was for abusive behavior. The company says such reports make up 98 percent of flagged items, however they only take action 13 percent of the time.

Twitter also criticized the government restricting its ability to publicly reveal some requests, because of federal gag orders. The company says it is still fighting the Justice Department in court to be able to release details of certain security requests.