peopleandpowermgr.com

Twitter has suspended the account of Niger Delta Avengers. People around the world who had hoped to read the latest tweets from the militants who have lately posed a major threat to Nigeria’s oil industry, this morning, met a brick wall.

“Account Suspended,” were the bold words with which the service provider announced its action on the account.

Twitter Rules list three reasons why an account may be suspended. The first is “Spam” and Twitter explains: “Most of the accounts we suspend are suspended because they are spammy, or just plain fake, and they introduce security risks for Twitter and all our users.”

The second is: “Account Security At Risk.” Here, Twitter says: “If we suspect an account has been hacked or compromised, we may suspend it until it can be secured and restored to the account owner in order to reduce potentially malicious activity caused by the compromise.”

The third is “Abusive Tweets or Behaviour” and here Twitter states: “We may suspend an account if it has been reported to us as violating our Rules surrounding abuse. When an account engages in abusive behaviour, like sending threats to others or impersonating other accounts, we may suspend it temporarily or in some cases, permanently.”

However, social media organisations like Facebook and Twitter have lately come under intense pressure particularly from Western governments who protest that terrorists have been using them to promote their ideology or incite people to violence.

Some of these organisations have evolved new rules aimed at putting terrorist threats, especially those by Islamic jihadists in check. Twitter now has a specific rule against violent threats, promotion of violence and promotion of terrorism. In February, Twitter claimed it had shut down over 125,000 terrorism-related accounts since the middle of 2015. It however said most of the accounts belonged to the Islamic State or ISIS.