WASHINGTON — The vicious jihadist group known as ISIS has overrun vast stretches of Syria and Iraq — but it’s beginning to lose ground on Twitter.
Over the past week, Twitter administrators have stepped up their efforts to suspend accounts affiliated with the extremist group, according to experts tracking ISIS on social media and other sources.
Dozens of accounts have been terminated in the past week alone.
Charles Lister, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center, said 12 official ISIS “provincial-level accounts, upon which they published all news — military, political, social, religious — for that specific area,” were disabled by Twitter on Aug. 11 after operating for months.
The next day, ISIS members re-created and advertised the accounts — only to have Twitter disable them, too, Lister said. The accounts were relaunched yet again — and suspended a third time, Lister said. By Saturday morning, just one one inactive account remained.
The Daily News has identified at least 10 other Twitter accounts used to spread ISIS propaganda and hate that were suspended in the past week.
“ISIS accounts are diminishing,” said Max Abrahms, a Northeastern University assistant professor who studies terror groups.
ISIS, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or simply the Islamic State, adheres to a harsh interpretation of Islam. ISIS fighters have shot dead countless minority Iraqis and beheaded opponents — and posted stomach-churning photos and videos of their handiwork.
The Twitter crackdown matters, terrorism experts say.
Terrorists by definition use violent acts to frighten larger populations, and rely on media to reach those they hope to terrorize.
ISIS in particular has used social media “to give the impression that this group is unstoppable,” Abrahms said.
The group cowed rival groups in Syria and opponents in Iraq “by creating the illusion that they were the biggest kid on the block,” he said. “It’s almost a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
ISIS also tried to intimidate people beyond the Middle East with World Cup-related hashtags, and it used a #Hawaii tag to invade the Twitter feeds of U.S. users with gruesome images, including photos of headless, bloody corpses.
Nu Wexler, a Twitter spokesman, said the company does not “comment on individual accounts, for privacy and security reasons.”
Twitter bars use of its social media platform to “publish or post direct, specific threats of violence” or to break U.S. or local laws.”
The company does not actively monitor content posted by users. It relies instead on reports of abuse by other Twitter users. Reports are reviewed by company lawyers who approve the suspension of accounts that violate the site’s rules.
The increased suspension of ISIS accounts is due to increased reports by Twitter users of abuse, analysts said.
Some of the suspensions also could be the result of government requests. Twitter, in an online transparency report, said it received U.S. government requests to block 42 Twitter accounts in the first half of 2014. It did not identify the accounts. Twitter said it received U.S. government requests for information on 1,918 Twitter accounts in the first half of this year. Twitter says it provided information in 72% of the cases.
Twitter’s rules do not allow a suspension simply because a user expresses support for ISIS or affiliation with the group. It remains easy to find scores of pro-ISIS tweeters, many with images of the burning World Trade Center towers featured on their feeds or user pages.
But if those users threaten violence, individual Twitter users can combat them by reporting their posts to the company through a link on the site’s rules page.
Some experts and government officials aren’t sure of the value of shutting up ISIS.
“These accounts were also invaluable sources of intelligence on the Islamic State — on its areas of activity, its military capabilities, its tactics and strategy, its recruitment needs etc.,” Lister said in an email.
“It seems quite possible now that the level of information available to assess the organization will be significantly reduced,” he said.
