ISIS Strategy, AQ Fractures, Twitter Suspensions, INTELWIRE Weekly Brief 04/10/2015

In an uncharacteristically forthcoming manner, Twitter revealed it had suspended 10,000 ISIS-linked accounts in one day, April 2.

This is consistent with the number of suspensions I tracked during that period, which totaled about 8,000 by the time I finished analyzing them on April 4. As Twitter points out, correctly, outside estimates are almost guaranteed to lag the actual number, since analysts (myself included) don't have access to the company's full data.

As a result, many analysts and activists underestimate the scope of Twitter's suspension program and overestimate the quality or completeness of their assessments thereof.

ISIS has also been fighting back with a renewed vigor, although it takes some days to regenerate what Twitter cost them in a single day. The suspension battle has its ups and downs, a process that was visible in the ISIS Twitter Census.

A couple of interesting items emerged during this process:

1. ISIS has been creating accounts at an increased pace to counter the suspensions, but not fast enough to keep up with suspensions in real time. At least 2,000 accounts were created as Twitter was suspending 10,000.
2. ISIS supporters estimated the number of suspensions extremely accurately. That means the accounts targeted were almost certainly the mujtahidun and that those accounts are being tracked programmatically. (The mujtahidun are discussed in detail in my new book, ISIS: The State of Terror, with Jessica Stern.) Given the 10,000 figure, it is likely that each mujtahidun user is maintaining multiple accounts, and other evidence supported this.
3. A group of about 12,000 ISIS-supporting users has remained largely undetected, with around 10,000 accounts that have escaped suspension for some months.
4. ISIS supporters are using an as-yet undetermined method (likely an app but there are other possibilities) to automatically follow certain accounts very quickly in specified numbers (more for high-profile accounts, fewer for key disseminators trying to fly beneath the radar while still getting the job done). An app produced under the name "Cheap Juice" was able to follow accounts for anyone who signed up, but was shut down during the same early April period.
5. Based on the New York Times story and anecdotal observations, the Anonymous-driven campaign to report ISIS accounts is almost certainly behind the large volume of suspensions. Twitter has changed its responsiveness to reporting, but according to the Times, it still relies primarily on reporting. This point to an issue I raised last week in a tweet: The primary trick to beating ISIS on Twitter is to not get bored with fighting them. If the reporting pressure recedes, the number of suspensions will recede, and ISIS will rebound until there is a new incentive to report its accounts. 

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