European taskforce to close Islamic State Twitter accounts
European law enforcement agency Europol is to assemble a taskforce to track and block the social media accounts of Islamic State members with the goal of taking such accounts offline within two hours of going live.
The continent-wide initiative will see the agency tie-up with unnamed social media platforms as part of efforts to prevent the indoctrination of people into IS ideology.
Outlining the programme to the BBC Europol director Rob Wainwright said: "We will have to combine what we see online, with our own intelligence and that that is shared with us by European police services, so we can be a bit more targeted and identify who the key user accounts are... and concentrate on closing them down."
Whilst the targeted platforms have not been made public Twitter alone was found to play host to up to 90,000 accounts which were supportive of the militant group.
Other conduits for extremist propaganda include Skype, WhatsApp and Kik which are used for online recruitment.