Twitter is coming clean about its efforts to fight terrorist-aligned accounts. In a new blog post, the company details a push towards fighting accounts aligned with violent extremist groups like ISIS, including increasing the size that manages reports and employing automated spam-fighting tools to locate offending accounts more efficiently. Twitter claims those tactics have resulted in more than 125,000 accounts suspended for threatening or promoting terrors acts since the middle of last year. "We have already seen results," the post reads, "including an increase in account suspensions and this type of activity shifting off of Twitter."
The move comes as Twitter is facing increasing criticism from some in Washington for the perceived presence of ISIS-friendly Twitter accounts. The company is currently facing a lawsuit from a woman whose husband was killed in an ISIS-linked account in Jordan, and seeks to hold Twitter financially responsible for the group's rise to power. At the same time, Twitter has also drawn criticism for being overly aggressive in suspending accounts, as when it briefly suspended an Arab Spring activist over a misunderstanding at the end of last year.