Twitter is cracking down on users that promote violent extremism and has suspended 235,000 accounts in the past half year, the company announced on Thursday. In February, Twitter said that they had shut down over 125,000 accounts as of mid-2015, writing at the time that those accounts were “primarily related to ISIS.” Now, the total number of accounts they’ve suspended is 360,000 in roughly the last year. An update on our efforts to combat violent extremism https://t.co/d7PEFWoTf8 — Policy (@policy) August 18, 2016Reports from Twitter users help the company identify extremist accounts, but so too do “proprietary spam-fighting tools,” which have identified more than one-third of the accounts shut down, the company said. Suspensions “spike” after terrorist attacks, Twitter said, and daily suspensions have increased 80 percent compared to last year. https://t.co/pEJuMUhCYs pic.twitter.com/jmFd0rDoV6 — Twitter Support (@Support) August 18, 2016On Thursday, Twitter also announced two new features that users can use to refine their experiences on the social network.

Source: Fox News August 18, 2016 19:30 UTC