Why is ISIS threatening Twitter employees with 'lions'?
The extremist militant group, also known as ISIS, has called for the assassination of Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. What does the group stand to gain from such threats?
The extremist militant group, also known as ISIS, has called for the assassination of Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. What does the group stand to gain from such threats?
The Islamic State is not happy with Twitter.
On Sunday, supporters of the extremist militant group called for the death of company employees in response to Twitter鈥檚 blocking of social media accounts associated with the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, Buzzfeed reported.
鈥淵our virtual war on us will cause a real war on you,鈥� read a post on the media-sharing site JustPaste.it.
鈥淲e told you from the beginning it鈥檚 not your war, but you didn鈥檛 get it and kept closing our accounts on Twitter, but we always come back,鈥� the post continued. 鈥淏ut when our lions come and take your breath, you will never come back to life.鈥�
The post, written in Arabic and addressed to Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, featured an image of Mr. Dorsey with crosshairs over his face.
Social media has been a vital tool for ISIS propaganda and recruitment since at least June, when the militants鈥� campaign of terror began in Iraq and Syria.
Extremists have been using Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr to spread their messages of martyrdom and loyalty to young people in Western countries, transforming jihadism into a full-blown media phenomenon, 海角大神 reported last July.
As The New York Times put it:
鈥淭hey are very adept at targeting a young audience,鈥� John G. Horgan, a terrorism expert and a psychologist at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, told the Times. 鈥淭here鈥檚 an urgency: 鈥楤e part of something that鈥檚 bigger than yourself and be part of it now.鈥欌��
At the same time, ISIS 鈥� like Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups before it 鈥� has used the Internet and social media to spread fear: The group鈥檚 infamous beheading videos in particular catapulted ISIS to notoriety on a global level.
Social media sites have been fighting back. Since last year, Twitter has been working with a UK counter-terrorism unit that specializes in social media counterattacks to shut down ISIS-related Twitter accounts, The Guardian reported.
The same unit is working with other social networking sites, such as YouTube, to take down videos of murder, torture, violence, and anything else that serves to glorify ISIS and its message of jihad, according to The Guardian.
The backlash was immediate. In September, an ISIS-related Twitter account used the hashtag #The_Concept_of_Lone_Wolf_Attacks to call for the assassination of Twitter employees, Vocativ reported.
A month later, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo told reporters that he and other employees had personally received threats from ISIS-related groups as a response to Twitter鈥檚 efforts to block extremist accounts from the social media site.
"It's against our terms of service," Mr. Costolo said at the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit in October. "It's against the law in many of the countries in which we operate for them to use it to promote their organization. When they do, we find those accounts and we shut them down, and we shut them down quite actively."
鈥淎fter regularly suspending their accounts鈥� some folks affiliated with the organization used Twitter to declare that the employees of Twitter and the management of Twitter should be assassinated,鈥� Costolo added.
鈥淭hat鈥檚 a jarring thing for anyone to have to deal with,鈥� he said.
None of the threats on Twitter employees have materialized so far, though the company doesn鈥檛 appear to be taking too many chances.
鈥淥ur security team is investigating the veracity of these threats with relevant law enforcement officials,鈥� Twitter spokesman Jim Prosser told Buzzfeed News.