Twitter is not acting quickly enough to remove the accounts of terrorists, allowing the Islamic State (ISIS) to use the social media service as a recruiting device, a counter-terrorism expert testified on Wednesday.
"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," Mark Wallace, CEO of the Counter Extremism Project
told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
"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," he said.
Wallace, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said his organization has "identified and reported hundreds of extremists to Twitter, but that the website has not shut down the accounts even though it's policy states that "users may not make threats of violence or promote violence, including threatening or promoting terrorism.
"Unfortunately the response we've gotten from Twitter is dismissive to the point of dereliction," Wallace told the committee. "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."
Twitter disputed Wallace's charges in a
statement to The Washington Free Beacon on Wednesday.
"We review all reported content against our rules, which prohibit unlawful use, violent threats, and the promotion of terrorism," a spokesperson told the website.