Hillary Clinton’s overseas coverage speech Thursday wasn’t exactly packed with specific strategies to defeat the Islamic State. However the Democratic presidential entrance-runner did supply this extremely focused strategy:
“Social media firms can even do their half by swiftly shutting down terrorist accounts, so that they’re not used to plan, provoke or have fun violence," she mentioned.
Growth. Simply shut it down. And do it swiftly.
On the floor, this seems like a standard-sense proposal. Social media is an important part of the Islamic State’s propaganda machine. When the group claimed duty for final week’s assaults on Paris, it did so on Twitter. Islamic State members routinely use social media to exchange instructions and recruit new members.
However hunting down terrorist accounts isn't any simple job. Laptop packages that search for suspicious key phrases ("ISIS," for instance) can’t do the job completely. It’s troublesome to separate individuals who assist the Islamic State from those that are merely speaking about the Islamic State — and even people who find themselves named Isis.
Sure, Fb inadvertently suspended the account of a San Francisco engineer named Isis Anchalee this week. She wasn’t thrilled.
