• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, February 5, 2016

Among a host of problems, Twitter has been widely criticized for facilitating communication between terrorist groups, and other bad actors.

The social giant appears to be taking a bite out of the criminal activity, however.

Since the middle of 2015, Twitter suspended over 125,000 accounts for threatening or promoting terrorist acts, primarily related to ISIS, the company said on Friday.

“We condemn the use of Twitter to promote terrorism and the Twitter Rules make it clear that this type of behavior, or any violent threat, is not permitted on our service,” the company said in a statement.

To cut down on criminal communications, Twitter has increased the size of the teams that review reports, which it says has reduced response time “significantly.”

The social network also looks into other accounts similar to those reported, and leverages proprietary spam-fighting tools to surface other potentially violating accounts for review by its agents.

These efforts have resulted in an increase in account suspensions and this type of activity shifting off Twitter.

While it has been criticized by consumer-watchdog groups for doing so, Twitter also cooperates with law enforcement entities in certain cases.

The company also partners with organizations working to counter extremist content online.

Beginning in late 2013, for example, its global public policy team launched an outreach campaign, which included attending more than 40 countering violent extremism events and trainings on four continents.

Twitter has also partnered with respected organizations, such as People Against Violent Extremism (PAVE) and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue to support non-governmental voices against violent extremism.

Despite the company’s efforts, it was recently found that Twitter remains the clear favorite among Islamic State supporters in the U.S.

That was according to a study by the George Washington University Program on Extremism, which analyzed the activities of 71 people arrested on charges of supporting the terror group in the last year, as well as 300 more currently moving in the terrorist online milieu.

As the report noted: “American ISIS activists and sympathizers are active on a variety of platforms, from open forums like Facebook, Google+, and Tumblr to more discrete messaging applications such as Kik, Telegram, surespot, and the dark web … But Twitter is by far the platform of choice of this informal echo chamber.”