Twitter To Suspend Accounts Of Those Sharing Beheading Videos

Thanks to social media, we can easily share all sorts of photos and videos, ranging from humorous, to thoughtful, to bizarre, and to disgusting. For the most part, offensive material tends to be pulled by moderators, but it seems that Twitter is taking an extra strong stance regarding videos that allegedly shows the beheading of photojournalist, James Foley.

For those hearing about this for the first time, James Foley was a photojournalist who was kidnapped in Syria about two years ago. However a recent video surfaced which allegedly showed a member of Isis decapitating Foley. The video has made its rounds on the internet and safe to say that the footage is pretty gruesome.

Twitter’s CEO Dick Costolo has since come forward with a tweet claiming that they are now actively suspending accounts who have shared the video. The video was originally uploaded onto YouTube before being taken down, but not before some people had saved the video onto their computers and begun using Twitter as an alternate means of sharing it.

Considering that the video itself would violate Twitter’s terms of service regarding violence, this hardly comes as a surprise, although it does seem that Twitter is being extra-strict about this.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Web
Tags: Twitter