ISIS threatens Twitter for blocking accounts

SAN FRANCISCO (Christian Examiner) – The Islamic State has invested heavily in social media to promote its terrorism and to recruit fighters from around the world, and now, facing blocks to its Twitter accounts, the jihadist group is threatening the tech giant with death to employees and its co-founder.

The group published an illustration with an image of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey with crosshairs on his face and made threats that Twitter employees have "become an official target to ISIS soldiers and supporters."

Twitter's policy prohibits hate speech, threats and promotion of terrorism and it has "in excess of 100 people," according to The Guardian, working 24 hours each day of the week to monitor activity "across a range of issues," including efforts by ISIS to set up new accounts.

ABC News announced Twitter had deleted more than 2,000 Islamic State accounts during the last seven days, and according to J.M. Berger, a terrorism analyst who monitors ISIS online messaging, Twitter has "slammed them pretty hard."

The U.S. intelligence community prefers the accounts stay open to collect intelligence, but ABC News reported "user-generated policy violation reports" have prompted the aggressive response by Twitter.