Twitter has come under criticism from some analysts who say the social media company has failed to swiftly remove accounts that recruit potential terrorists and incite violence, raising concerns that the United States has not done enough to combat the Islamic State’s rapid expansion of its propaganda operations online.
Mark Wallace, CEO of the Counter Extremism Project, said on Wednesday that the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL) terrorist group has effectively used social media sites such as Twitter to propagandize and radicalize individuals, including Americans. His nonprofit project recently chronicled 66 U.S. citizens who are accused of joining or attempting to join the Islamic State, plotting attacks in the United States, providing financial support to extremist groups, or disseminating radical propaganda.
"These individuals have very different backgrounds and experiences, but the one characteristic they seem to share is active participation on social media," he said in testimony to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
"Since its creation, ISIS in particular has deployed an incredibly sophisticated social media campaign to radicalize and recruit new members and to call for acts of terror around the world," he added. "There are at least 43,000 active pro-ISIS Twitter accounts, sending approximately 200,000 tweets a day, amplifying and endlessly repeating ISIS’s messages of hate and terror."
Wallace, also the CEO of United Against Nuclear Iran and a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said his group has "identified and reported hundreds of extremists to Twitter" who issued direct threats and attempted to incite violence. The social media company’s current policy states that "users may not make threats of violence or promote violence, including threatening or promoting terrorism."
However, Twitter has not applied the policy consistently or effectively, Wallace said.
"Unfortunately the response we’ve gotten from Twitter is dismissive to the point of dereliction," he said. "We have written three letters describing the problem and requesting a sit-down between Twitter and CEP leadership. Twitter has ignored all but one letter, and its reply, simply put, was indifferent at best."
The company has also attempted to "distract from the reality that their platform has been weaponized by ISIS extremists," he said. He noted comments by a Twitter official last year who told Mother Jones that "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter," arguing that the social media site permits extreme speech as long as it does not violate its policies.
A Twitter spokesperson pushed back against Wallace’s criticism that the company has not actively cracked down on extremist accounts.
"We review all reported content against our rules, which prohibit unlawful use, violent threats, and the promotion of terrorism," the spokesperson said.
Wallace mentioned the case of Sally Jones—a 45-year-old former British punk rocker who joined the Islamic State in Syria with her husband, a British hacker, and her 10-year-old son—as "a great example of Twitter’s failure to combat the threat of violent extremism online." "Over the last year, we witnessed Jones and her now deceased husband return to Twitter with slightly altered monikers dozens of times," he said.
After her husband was killed in a U.S. airstrike in August, Jones, who now goes by Umm Hussain al-Britani, continued efforts on Twitter to find recruits for the Islamic State and encourage terrorist attacks in Western countries. She is believed to have been behind the terrorist group’s September release of a "kill list" of 100 U.S. military and government personnel that was obtained from public websites. The State Department subsequently named her a "specially designated global terrorist."
Yet earlier this month, Jones was back on Twitter with a new account that released the purported home address of Robert O’Neill, a Navy SEAL veteran who claimed that he killed Osama bin Laden during the 2011 raid by U.S. special operations forces.
Some U.S. officials have been less critical of Twitter’s efforts to help combat online radicalization. Alistair Baskey, a National Security Council spokesman, told the Washington Examiner in July that the White House is "generally satisfied with how these companies comply with these procedures and with their willingness to discuss the matter with concerned parties."
James Comey, the director of the FBI, also said in July that Twitter has "very good and thoughtful and hardworking at trying to shut down accounts." Some counterterrorism officials believe that it might be useful to keep some jihadist-linked accounts online in order to gather intelligence, Comey said.
Still, Comey said that the Islamic State is "actually quite good at what they do" and acts as "the devil on your shoulder all day long, saying, 'Kill, kill, kill.’"
Shutting down terrorist propaganda on social media is vital because Twitter serves as a "gateway drug," Wallace said. Once jihadist propagandists reach potential recruits on Twitter, they can then move to applications with private or encrypted communications to evade U.S. authorities.
Three teenage girls from Colorado attempted to join the Islamic State last year after they interacted for months with prominent recruiters on Twitter and shared extremist videos, including one featuring Anwar al-Awlaki—the American and former al Qaeda leader who was killed in a U.S. drone strike in 2011. German authorities worked with the FBI to apprehend the girls before they could enter Syria.
Wallace urged Twitter to develop a process that would allow users to report suspected terrorist activity quickly. Additionally, he recommended that the company grant "trusted reporting status" to entities such as his project and the State Department that could help Twitter swiftly identify terrorists and remove their accounts, a step he said other social media sites have taken.
"The majority of social media companies are U.S. companies, but online misuse has global consequences," he said. "It is time that social media companies like Twitter take responsibility for the global implications of their platforms and their lack of action."