Twitter suspends thousands of accounts amid 'extremism'

Twitter has announced the suspension of  more than 600, 000 terrorist linked Twitter accounts since the middle of 2015 as the company steps up all efforts to tackle "violent extremism" on its platform.

The announcement on Tuesday comes as social media platforms are coming under increasing pressure to help prevent the spread of hate speech and also help governments fight extremism online.

The company said it has shut down a total of 376,890 accounts in the second half of 2016 alone, Twitter said in its latest transparency report.

Twitter also stated that it had started accepting legal requests to remove content posted by verified journalists and media outlets adding that it had received 88 such requests, but had not taken any action on the majority of these requests.