Twitter Suspends Accounts Associated with Hamas and Hezbollah

According to The Wall Street Journal, Twitter has been hard at work over the weekend and suspended a number of accounts that were associated with the Hamas and Hezbollah militant groups. 

A while ago, Twitter told congressmen that it clearly differentiated between the political and military of the two groups and allowed them to continue to use the platform. The House members replied to Twitter however that “this distinction is not meaningful, nor is it widely shared. Hezbollah and Hamas are terrorist organizations as designated by the United States Government. Period.”

Now, it seems like Twitter has given the issue a bit more thought. 

After all, the platform has received a lot of backlash and criticism from lawmakers, who, as seen above, consider the two groups terrorist organizations – Twitter, Google and Facebook all received a letter from a bipartisan group of US House members asking them for a precise timeline for when it plans to remove the Hamas and Hezbollah content from across their platforms. 

Now, Twitter has suspended the Hamas’ English and Arabic-language accounts as well as those who belong to a television station linked to Hezbollah, Al-Manar, among others. 

On November 1st, Twitter’s director of public policy in the United States and Canada, Carlos Monje Jr. said that, after having been reviewed, the accounts were suspended. 

“Twitter’s policy is to remove or terminate all accounts it identifies as owned or operated by, or directly affiliated with, any designated foreign terrorist association. If Twitter identifies an account as affiliated with Hamas or Hizballah [sic], Twitter’s policy is to terminate that account,” he said in a letter. “Twitter also takes significant steps to identify accounts that are not directly affiliated with a designated foreign terrorist organization but which nonetheless promote or support violent extremism.”