While the Islamic State has previously threatened to kill Twitter employees as a result of the social media firm deactivating accounts run by terrorists, lawmakers are making a renewed push for Twitter to get more aggressive in shutting down those accounts.
Lawmakers on the House Foreign Affairs Committee have sent a letter to Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, urging Twitter to have a dedicated team to kill the terrorists’ accounts.
The letter was sent by the committee’s chairman, Ed Royce, R-California, Rep. Eliot Engel, D-New York, Rep. Brad Sherman, D-California, and Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas. Even though approximately 2,000 acounts have been shut off, it’s estimated there are tens of thousands still active.
“We applaud your removal of some terrorist content, which has provoked serious threats against Twitter and its employees. However, we urge Twitter to treat all terrorist activity in the same way it treats other objectionable content. Users should have the option to report terrorist content in a streamlined manner, allowing Twitter to quickly block content and accounts that support terrorism, and Twitter should have a dedicated team to review such reports in a timely fashion,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter.
The lawmakers said that “when Twitter accounts are used to support terrorism, such content does not deserve protection,” of free speech.
Previously, Costolo wrote in an internal memo that they need to be better about policing activity.
“We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform, and we’ve sucked at it for years,” Costolo wrote.
h/t: The Hill
