After Twitter deactivated accounts of many ISIS fighters, who were active members of the social networking website, the latter issued death threats against the former, saying all Twitter Inc. (NYSE:TWTR) employees and management should be assassinated.
It is always a matter of great controversy when social networking websites censor content on their pages, but seldom does the management receive death threats for doing so. This time, the axe was thrown on ISIS accounts, which were, very actively, using Twitter to further their cause of recruiting members into the militant group fighting in Syria and Iraq for the development of an “Islamic State.” In response, many ISIS accounts on Twitter issued death threats such as this:
“#The_Concept_of_Lone_Wolf_Attacks The time has arrived to respond to Twitter’s management by directly attacking their employees and physically assassinating them!! Those who will carry this out are the sleeper cells of death.”
This tweet, sent out by a Jerusalem-based organization called Al Nusra Al Maqdisia through their supposed twitter account “@dawlamoon”, asked “lone wolves” of ISIS to launch attacks on employees of Twitter, including the higher management and CEO.
Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter, is no stranger to death threats. According to him, it would not have been an issue if these accounts were unpopular, but considering they had a following of over 3,000 twitter members it makes the threats highly unsettling for Twitter employees. In a statement, Costolo said that dealing with death threats is “a jarring thing for anyone to have to deal with.” As CEO of the company, Costolo has “spent a lot of time talking to the company about it” in order to keep Twitter employees relaxed and motivated enough to continue removing ISIS accounts off of twitter.
But the war is not one-sided. According to Costolo, he has to face opposition from both sides of the coin. If at one side he is being given death threats by ISIS, on the other side his actions are being criticized by freedom of speech activists. “One group of users feeling that this type of speech shouldn’t be available on the platform, and another group of users saying ‘no, no, no, it’s very important that that type of speech be available on the platform,’” Costolo said.
However, in multiple statements, Twitter argues, quite justifiably, that ISIS accounts were blocked because they violated the Twitter Terms of Service, which every member accepts to abide by when signing up for the social networking website, and that has resulted in the ban. In Twitter’s Terms of Service, supporting violence and promoting hate speech is declared impermissible, violation of which results in suspension of the account.
Costolo said that these accounts were going against Twitter’s terms and conditions; he further said that in many countries where Twitter has a presence it is against their laws to use the social networking website to promote an organization like this. Costolo went on to say that when this sort of an activity is identified Twitter shuts down the accounts and do so quite actively.
Twitter Inc. (NYSE:TWTR) recently faced a ban in Turkey, a decision reverted only two-weeks after by a constitutional court stating the ban as a violation of freedom of speech.
