
Twitter Suspends 300k Accounts Tied to Terrorism in 2017 - rayuela
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-19/twitter-suspends-300-000-accounts-in-2017-for-terrorism-content
======
ohsnapman
Saw a lot of speculation about what ISIS does or does not do without actual
links. Here are a few good ones I've seen in the past:

[https://www.wired.com/2015/11/isis-opsec-encryption-
manuals-...](https://www.wired.com/2015/11/isis-opsec-encryption-manuals-
reveal-terrorist-group-security-protocols/)

This podcast was pretty good. ISIS were using a Turkish Dropbox like service
to move files ... except the service was actually based in France, something a
whois _on the domain_ could have easily detected. Fighters have also geotagged
tweets/instagram/Facebook posts, which led to a drone strike:

[https://gimletmedia.com/episode/62-decoders/](https://gimletmedia.com/episode/62-decoders/)

So ... they're both more sophisticated than you think when it comes to opsec.
And less sophisticated than you think when it comes to opsec.

~~~
Iv
> So ... they're both more sophisticated than you think when it comes to
> opsec. And less sophisticated than you think when it comes to opsec.

A lot of their recruits are people in their 20s or even teens from various
countries including western ones. They are basically regular users that try to
learn opsec as they do. And the youth from most muslim countries also use
smartphones and most of the services we use too.

ISIS used to be more sophisticated in terms of opsec when their officers were
mostly former officers from Saddam but since then it feels like either the
drone strikes managed to decapitate their hierarchy or that there were
internal purges to promote the truly ideologically crazies.

Also, when an operation is said to have succeed thanks to opsec, always
remember that it can be a way to cover an internal humint source.

------
chrissnell
I understand why Twitter might not want ISIS accounts on their service but
from a national security standpoint, it seems better to have the communication
happening on a U.S.-based service like Twitter than some darknet or crypto-
centric app.

~~~
aphextron
Agreed, and this should be the retort to any curtailing of free speech in the
name of safety. Its the same argument as allowing “the_donald” to exist on
Reddit. You will not stop an ideology by denying them a platform. Better to
debate them in an open forum, even if they are evil. The only way to counter
bad ideas is with good ones.

~~~
softawre
There was a recent /r/science article that suggested the banning of coontown
and fatpeoplehate resulted in less hate on the platform as a whole. Would you
argue this hate moved to other avenues of the web? I'd bet some of it did, but
some people just stopped being so hateful on the internet once their cesspool
went away.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/6zg6w6/reddits_ban...](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/6zg6w6/reddits_bans_of_rcoontown_and_rfatpeoplehate/)

~~~
katastic
It's conflation to compare coontown with the_donald. Go there right now. You
won't find "kill the jews" posts. You won't find "kill the gays/black people"
posts. You'll find a ton of supportive people with a particular worldview--and
there's nothing wrong with that.

If you assume the people you disagree with are "insane" or disregard them as
"full of hate" then you'll never understand why they think the way they do and
the division in our world continues unabated.

It still blows my mind that people who support the currently elected
president, are considered a hate group. If the other candidate had won, would
we consider her subreddit a hate sub? Would we care what the losing party
thought about her subreddit? We all know the answer to that: "No." I have
never before seen an election where "only one candidate is considered a human
being."

Strange times.

~~~
neuronexmachina
I was curious and peeked over to see what's currently popular over at
the_donald. Some of the top-voted recent links:

* "UN Globalists are on suicide watch after President Trump's speech"

* "One of the best quotes of the speech. Socialist cucks BTFO!"

* "This tweet from David Brock's cucks is less than 2 weeks old and has already aged terribly."

* "Can you imagine a world without Islam?"

* "HE TRULY IS A GOD AMONG MEN" (God-Emperor Trump)

* "Since 9/11 there have been ~35,000 deadly Islamic terror attacks; that's an average of 2,000 per year... So let's (A) NEVER FORGET, (B) PRESS F, and (C) DRIVE. THEM. OUT. FROM. THE. EARTH!"

~~~
katastic
Bill Maher, once heralded as an extreme left liberal (who supported gay
marriage and marijuana legalization in the early 90's when nobody thought
either would ever happen), consistently talks about the "threat of Islam to
democracy". Is he a neocon now? And should we remove his speech to "reduce
hate" the same way you're suggesting the_donald be removed?

~~~
viraptor
You pivoted away from the topic. Bill Maher case may be interesting to
discuss, but doesn't change whether the_donald calls for hate. Which actually
looking at the subreddit shows it does.

~~~
katastic
Not at all. Which is the hate?

Either Bill Maher (a liberal hero) is a racist islamaphobe, or, the_donald
users who share the same views as him... aren't islamaphobes.

Because unless we're not talking about Islamaphobia, what else did you
actually see that could be considered "hateful"? Because on that same sub
you'll find people of all colors, and most religions discussing things. You'll
find legal immigrants. You'll find ex-Muslims and atheists. You'll find gays.
You'll find women. You'll find Brits. You'll find lifelong Democrats and
Libertarians. You'll find ex-"Bernie Bros" who were furious at the DNC's
betrayal of Bernie Sanders. You'll find people who grew up under Communist
rule. I know, because I've seen every single one of those on that sub and
almost every one of those demographics has posted a picture of themselves with
a MAGA hat at one point or another.

If you want an actual white supremacist sub, you're thinking of
/r/uncensorednews which actually lists Jews with (((triple parenthesis))).
That's a pretty sharp contrast to the_donald. But it wouldn't be, if
the_donald was as hateful as been claimed.

~~~
viraptor
You can always find a worse place. There are places worse than 4chan too, but
I don't see how that's relevant to the_donald being hate filled / fuelled.

There's islamophobia, there's cherry picking of news about rape claims,
infowars crap about illegal immigrants which is just hate mongering, posts
like "let's trigger illegals and show some love for our ICE agents".

I'm not going to link to that dump specifically because they don't deserve the
publicity. If you don't see this as hate mongering, we disagree on a very
fundamental level.

------
Semiapies
"roughly 95 percent were identified by the company’s spam-fighting automation
tools"

I wonder how high the false positive rate is.

~~~
eanzenberg
More interested in the false negatives (what wasn't found)

~~~
Semiapies
Why? Actual terrorist activity is rare. People being harassed, detained, etc.
in the name of fighting terrorism, not so much.

------
ghostbrainalpha
Twitter has 300 million active users.

So .1% of Twitter accounts were linked to terrorism, and they just purged
1/1000th of the active accounts on their system.

I am shocked what a big percentage that is. That is a huge move by them.

~~~
BoorishBears
Not to downplay the move, but by their own admission, many of them were banned
before they even tweeted once. I'd bet most of them don't fall under MAU

------
jimnotgym
I just hope that one day they will do something about the bot accounts. They
seem able to have an effect on political discourse, and therefore present a
clear danger to democracy. Many are also completely obvious and would be
trivial to round up.

------
katastic
I'm more interested in why it took them this long, while they're perfectly
fine suspending accounts that are politically opposing to their worldview. How
are political dissenters more dangerous than actual terrorists?

~~~
grandalf
The word "terrorism" is a PR word intended to marginalize whatever group it is
applied to.

As a tactic, terrorism describes the infliction of civilian casualties meant
to create a disproportionate climate of fear. By this definition, drones used
in warfare are a form of terrorism.

In today's world we are not fighting wars in the traditional sense of
defending ourselves against aggression. Since there is no obvious threat, the
people will not support a pragmatic war of aggression meant to help install US
hegemony in oil rich (or otherwise geopolitically important) regions of the
world.

So our planners are left with the need to create a moralistic crusade and to
marginalize and dehumanize the adversary so that Americans will not care when
we find out that many of them (and their civilians) were slaughtered or forced
to live in poverty/squalor.

It starts with the framing of the adversary as helpless against an
illegitimate regime. The people are framed as victims of their own failure to
end up with a better regime, and the moralistic idea of nation building and
bringing in democracy is introduced.

Then, the regime is asked to give up power. When it refuses, as all regimes
would, the US pretends it has a moral justification to use force against
people and infrastructure. There is the heavy implication that a greater
purpose exists, such as democracy or women's rights, or stopping the torture
policies of the regime, etc.

But in fact no plan exists other than to remove the regime from power. Never
before has there been a more hollow policy/intellectual movement than the idea
of nation building.

Meanwhile, the US has typically funded various militant groups that oppose the
regime, and now those groups are no longer needed. Some decide to seek power
in the newly existing power vacuum. They will be branded as terrorists
arbitrarily to suit the needs of the US PR campaign.

The word terrorism is used to characterize a person or a set of beliefs or an
organization as unworthy of respect and unworthy of humane treatment.

Yet in the US we fail to recognize our drone strikes as the same tactic as
suicide bombings, while we create untold pain and suffering abroad.

Both of our major political parties strongly support the endless war and the
endless killing and destruction of the political adversaries abroad who dare
to try to control their own destinies and the destinies of their region.

Twitter clearly supports this too, and feels obligated to help eradicate the
first amendment as much as possible in its own small way, even if it can't
actually revoke the amendment.

~~~
slg
You are missing the biggest differentiating factor of terrorism, the targeting
of innocent civilians. Yes, US drone strikes do cause fear in a similar way to
terrorism. Yes, civilians are being killed by US drone strikes. Yes, that fact
is morally reprehensible. But no drone strike is launched with the sole intent
of killing civilians. That is a world of difference.

~~~
aaron-lebo
This is a fun discussion because you're both right and tomes have been written
about the definition of terrorism. Some of the actions of the IRA or the
bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon in 82 are interesting events to
consider in the civilian/military distinction.

It's also worth noting that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were acts of terror under
most definitions.

This is a good definition, which IIRC was compiled from a lot of other
academic sources:

 _Alex Schmid and Albert Jongman: “Terrorism is an anxiety-inspiring method of
repeated violent action, employed by (semi-)clandestine individual, group, or
state actors, for idiosyncratic, criminal, or political reasons, whereby—in
contrast to assassination—the direct targets of violence are not the main
targets. The immediate human victims of violence are generally chosen randomly
(targets of opportunity) or selectively (representative or symbolic targets)
from a target population, and serve as message generators.”_

[https://www.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-
binaries/511...](https://www.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-
binaries/51172_ch_1.pdf)

~~~
slg
That is a better definition than mine since I used the word civilian. You are
right that terrorist attacks can be directed at military members.

I would maybe challenge or tweak the state actors inclusion in potential
perpetrators. The bombing of population centers like London, Dresden,
Hiroshima, Nagasaki, etc. during WWII feels like a separate category. Those
should still be war crimes, however the fact that they were carried out during
an active war by the military would seem to make them a little different than
traditional terrorist attacks.

------
Sir_Cmpwn
There's no way they audited 300,000 accounts and got conclusive results about
all of them. I wonder how many innocent accounts were swept up in this?

~~~
sushid
The article EXPLICITLY states: > Of those, roughly 95 percent were identified
by the company’s spam-fighting automation tools

So yes, your hunch is right, but it's also mentioned in the article.

~~~
mi100hael
To be fair, it also EXPLICITLY states:

 _> Twitter said about 75 percent of the blocked accounts this year were
spotted before a single tweet was sent_

So the impact to average users is probably not very substantial.

~~~
supergreg
How do they know the account was from an actual terrorist or from a Viagra
salesbot if it never made a post?

~~~
chc
I get spam follows from bots with no posts all the time. It's generally pretty
easy to tell who will turn out to be a real person or not — they'll have
random, super botty names (Svetlana Nakamoto with the handle jonesdevin), or
their profile pics will be stock art or porn stars, or something like that.

------
yosito
Twitter really ought to do something about Sybil attacks. In fact, they could
probably fix their monetization strategy at the same time; start charging
users some small fee in exchange for having their identity verified. Non
verified accounts can't be retweeted or they have some caps on the number of
public views they can get, or interactions they can have with accounts that
don't follow them, etc. Now that I think about it, this could solve their spam
and harassment problems too.

------
Xeoncross
> The company is balancing a commitment to free speech against pressure from
> policymakers who want to see social media companies do more to fight
> extremism and hate speech.

Big issue for today. Both 'free speech' extremes are bad. No two people can
agree on a "perfect" middle ground though.

------
5_minutes
I wish they would release also some of these good usernames that have been
abused or used by scammers. Or at least something like: if the account didn't
post a tweet in like, say, 5 years... notify the owner it's up for expiry.

Some house cleaning, how hard can it be.

------
module0000
Radical anything on Twitter/Facebook/mainstream-whatever is a honey pot. Stick
your hand in and watch the suburbans roll up.

------
frandroid
> Twitter said about 75 percent of the blocked accounts this year were spotted
> before a single tweet was sent

Fascinating... Just based on the username and the user's self-description?

~~~
sushid
Obviously not. You can fingerprint a user/device with a lot of information
from your browser.

You can detect obvious things like browser, IP address, OS, but also more
unique details like battery level, screen size, etc.

~~~
frandroid
I understand that, but an IP address doesn't make an account an ISIS account.
An ISIS supporter might also be a Galatasaray SK supporter...

------
jhack
I saw one account that threatened to exterminate tens of millions of people
today. I reported the post but somehow I doubt Twitter will do anything about
it.

~~~
averagewall
Unless it was made by a powerful country, that wouldn't be a credible threat
so it wouldn't matter. If it was 10's of people, it might be taken more
seriously and you should report it to the police anyway, not just Twitter.

------
Overtonwindow
[deleted]

~~~
kakarot
Care to elaborate?

------
droithomme
Wow that's a lot of "terrorists".

Will there be prosecutions against these 300,000 terrorists where the evidence
they are terrorists is presented in court to be evaluated through a legal
process?

