Twitter, the social media giant, is facing mounting questions from members of Congress and outside groups over the abuse of its network by Islamic State terrorists to spread propaganda and recruit foreign fighters.
An
upcoming report has identified as many as 46,000 Twitter accounts that
were being used by IS sympathizers during a three-month period last fall
— making it by far the most popular social media service for the terror
group, according to J.M. Berger, who conducted the study, to be
published next month by the Brookings Institution.
But
in recent weeks, how Twitter — as well as other social media companies
such as YouTube and Facebook — polices this content is emerging as a
central issue in a vexing debate that pits the limits of free speech
against the government’s need to confront the aggressive messaging of IS
and related terror groups. It is expected to be a prime topic of a
social media panel scheduled today at a White House summit on
“countering violent extremism.”
“This
is the way [IS] is recruiting — they are getting people to leave their
homelands and become fighters,” said Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, the chair of
a House foreign affairs subcommittee on terrorism, who held a recent
hearing on the issue.
While
acknowledging that IS propagandists use all social media platforms, Poe
said “there is frustration with Twitter specifically” over what he
views as its insufficient response to pleas to shut down clear
incitements to violence.
Poe
told Yahoo News that he and other members of Congress will be sending a
letter to Twitter CEO Dick Costolo this week demanding that the firm
take more active measures to shut down IS tweeters. “We want them to
treat this the same as child pornography,” said Poe, noting that the
firm has been far more vigilant in shutting down obscene images than it
has with those containing extremist and violent content.
But
Twitter officials say the criticisms are misplaced and that its
policies are no different from those of other social media companies,
which rely on the public to report abuses. Officials also say the
critics ignore behind-the-scenes cooperation the firm has been providing
to the FBI, which at times seeks to use Twitter to track and, with
luck, identify IS tweeters.
“Like
our peer companies, we do not proactively monitor content,” a Twitter
spokesman said in an email. “We review all reported content against our
rules, which prohibit unlawful use and direct, specific threats of
violence against others. Users report potential rules violations to us,
we review their reports and take action if the content violates our
rules.”
In
part, several sources said, Twitter’s problems are of its own making.
“Twitter is notoriously close-mouthed in how they handle suspensions and
what goes on in the company,” said Berger, an expert on the use of
social media. “We don’t know who they suspend, and why. Of all the
social media companies, they have been very reluctant to be involved in
discussions with the government” — a stance he attributes to the
“libertarian views” of the company’s founders and executives.
That attitude led to tensions with White House officials when
they sought to engage the company in discussions about the policing of
its network, according to two sources familiar with internal
deliberations on the issue. Lisa Monaco, President Barack Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser, has privately complained that Twitter “wouldn’t even return [White House officials’] phone calls,” said one former U.S. official. “They were really pissed off.”
(A
Twitter official declined to comment on the record. A White House
official said Twitter will be sending representatives to this week’s
White House summit, but none of its executives are slated to speak,
either on the social media panel or at any other summit-related event.
“They didn’t see this as a good fit,” said one administration official
when asked about Twitter’s role in the summit.)
The
use — and abuse — of social media platforms by IS and other terror
groups has been a growing issue for U.S. and other Western law
enforcement and intelligence agencies. IS has developed what Matt Olsen,
the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, has
described as the “most sophisticated propaganda machine” of any
terrorist organization. The group employs a network of cyberwarriors,
based in Raqqa, Syria, whose members target young people for recruitment
(leveraging popular hashtags like #World Cup and #Ebola to extend its
reach) and repeatedly post vile and threatening messages, including
graphic images of beheadings and other executions, such as the recent
burning of a Jordanian pilot.
These
efforts are believed to be spearheaded in part by a notorious British
hacker, Junaid Hussain, who has previously been imprisoned for hacking
into former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s address book and posting
personal details online.
The congressional concerns about Twitter’s policies were amplified by the recent disclosure of an internal memo
written by Twitter CEO Costolo taking his own firm to task for its
failure to shut down tweeters who engage in cyberbullying and sexual
harassment on its network. “We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on
the platform,” Costolo wrote in the memo. “We’re going to start kicking
these people off right and left and making sure that when they issue
their ridiculous attacks, nobody hears them.”
Poe
said in an interview that he wants to see Twitter take the same
attitude toward IS tweeters. But even he acknowledges that the issue is
complicated. In recent meetings, Poe said Twitter representatives have
argued that they have taken their primary guidance from the FBI: The law
enforcement agency has indicated that it often wants Twitter to leave
IS-linked accounts up, so the bureau can track them.
“We’ll
take them down when the FBI tells us to take them down,” Poe said
Twitter officials have argued in the meetings he has had with them. (A
senior FBI official confirmed that the bureau has at times asked Twitter
not to suspend accounts to help identify IS members and who they might
be in communication with inside the United States.)
But
former George W. Bush White House counterterrorism adviser Fran
Townsend, who heads a private group called the Counter Extremism
Project, which has been sharply critical of Twitter, said the FBI and
U.S. intelligence agencies have “plenty of other ways” to track IS
tweeters. “The risk of recruitment and incitement to violence outweighs
the benefits from surveilling them and finding out who they are,” she
said in an interview.
Townsend’s
concerns about IS tweeters are personally felt. Last fall, she reported
to the FBI about menacing tweets threatening to behead her, made by one
prominent IS tweeter who has used the name “Mujahid Miski.” (Miski has
been identified in federal court papers as Mohammed Abdullah Hassan, a
Somali-American who is under federal indictment on terror charges in
Minneapolis and is now a fugitive. Among his recent tweets: “Allahu
Akbar, 5 Jews were sent to hell by two brave Muslims. Allahu Akbar, If
only every Muslims could kill 1 Jew, everything would change.”)
But Miski’s case also shows the difficulties that Twitter and
other social media firms have in cracking down on such content. Miski
has boasted on Twitter that his account has been suspended 20 times;
after each suspension, he slightly changes the name on his account and
pops back up. “My view is that we can kick them off, but it’s not going to solve the issue,” said Quintan Wiktorowicz, a former White House national security adviser under Obama who specialized in countering-violent-extremism issues. “It really is playing whack-a-mole.”
The
only long-term solution is a sustained partnership between U.S.
government officials and social media companies to amplify and spread
messages countering IS propaganda — a major goal, administration
officials say, of this week’s summit.
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