Though Twitter has not confirmed or denied the news, a Twitter expert noticed the sudden drop in ISIS linked Twitter accounts.
— Zaid Benjamin (@zaidbenjamin) April 2, 2015 According to Zaid, Twitter suspended thousands of accounts of Islamic State, ISIL and Daesh – and its supporters A Twitter representative on Thursday confirmed to news outlets that its violations department had in fact suspended some 10,000 accounts on one day – 2 April – “for tweeting violent threats”. The Twitter representative, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, attributed the wave of shutdowns to ISIS opponents who’ve been vigilant in reporting accounts for policy violation: Though the Twitter swoop is not linked to the #OpISIS by Anonymous, the recent exposing of Twitter accounts by Anonymous members like GhostSec and XRSOne have no doubt helped Twitter in zeroing onto the threatening Twitter accounts. In early March, Twitter acknowledged shutting down at least 2000 ISIS-linked accounts per week in recent months. However many critics of Twitters ban policies are skeptical about the effectiveness of mass account suspensions. The NYT mentions one such activist who keeps a database of suspended users and who says that many of the suspended account holders just add a number or letter to the end of their account names, over and over, as they get suspended. NYT notes that one ISIS supporter, @turjuman123, has reportedly been suspended 122 times and is now on his 123rd iteration of the @turjuman account (although this has also now been suspended). ISIS and their supporters make around 500 million tweets a day according to ISIS watchers. Anonymous had made public 26000 and 14000 Twitter ids of ISIS and its supporters, on different occasions under #OpISIS.
