Twitter suspends 235,000 accounts for supporting extremist causes

Twitter on Thursday suspended 235,000 accounts that promoted terrorism over the last six months, as the micro-blogging network continued to crack down on the use of its platform for extremist causes.

''The world has witnessed a further wave of deadly, abhorrent terror attacks across the globe,'' Twitter said in a statement. ''We strongly condemn these acts and remain committed to eliminating the promotion of violence or terrorism on our platform.''

With the latest action, the total number of accounts that the company has suspended had reached 360,000 since it launched the initiative in mid-2015. While Twitter had long championed free speech on the web, in the best traditions of the ''global town square,'' its positioning had attracted bullies, racists and extremist groups to the service to spread their messages.

While Twitter was trying to reconcile its free speech stance with how women and minorities could be targeted on the service, the company had taken a clear  cut stance over combating terrorism.

According to the company, daily suspensions for violations of Twitter's prohibition on terrorism were up over 80 per cent since last year, increase in suspensions immediately following terrorist attacks.

Twitter added that it had expanded its teams to review reported violations, and was now able to move faster in suspending accounts and make it harder for suspended users to return to the platform.

The San Francisco-headquartered company added that it had benefited from the use of spam-fighting tools that can automatically detect problem accounts.

"We have expanded the teams that review reports around the clock, along with their tools and language capabilities," Twitter said in its blog. "We also collaborate with other social platforms, sharing information and best practices for identifying terrorist content."

"Our work is not done," Twitter said on its blog post, adding, "Our efforts continue to drive meaningful results, including a significant shift in this type of activity off of Twitter."