Mother Jones
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ISIS, the radical Islamist group that has seized large chunks of Iraq and Syria, has established a significant presence in the Twittersphere, using the microblogging platform to recruit, inspire, and terrorize. So has Twitter, the San Francisco-based tech company that collects large amounts of location and personal data on its users, teamed up with international governments to stop ISIS? Not really. Apparently, ISIS’s tweeters are not all violating Twitter’s rules.
This summer, media reports noted that Twitter was suspending user accounts affiliated with ISIS. The Guardian reported that Twitter was “in duel” with ISIS and “closer than ever” with law enforcement agencies, mostly focusing on radical content coming from Syria and Iraq. Slate noted that Twitter practices a “systematic removal of terrorist content.” And Marie Harf, the spokesperson for the State Department, hinted in September on CNN that the government was collaborating with Twitter to keep an eye on ISIS: “We’ve talked to Twitter and YouTube and others about their own terms of service and making sure that ISIS’s videos or photos don’t violate those, because some of them, as you know, are quite gruesome.”
Some ISIS accounts were suspended, including accounts that issued death threats against Twitter employees. But Twitter has not launched an all-out crusade to eradicate ISIS from the Twitterverse.
Waging a (virtual) war against ISIS is not on Twitter’s agenda. According to one Twitter company official, who asked not to be identified, the tech firm isn’t interested in defining terrorism or silencing political speech. “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter,” this Twitter official says, pointing out that Twitter has long been a home for political dissidents and unpopular and extreme views. ISIS, however radical and violent, isn’t an exception. Twitter, this official insists, takes terrorism and violence seriously, but does not compromise on its terms.
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