ISIS threatens to kill Twitter founder and employees
Lauren O'Neil | CBC News | Posted: March 2, 2015 9:37 PM | Last Updated: March 2, 2015
ISIS supporters call on jihadists around the world to target Twitter founder Jack Dorsey and his employees
Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey is now squarely in the crosshairs of ISIS supporters, according to an online message believed to have been posted by the militant group on Sunday.
The message in question, uploaded anonymously to JustPaste.it, urges “individual jihadis” all over the world to target Twitter’s headquarters and kill its employees.
“Don’t allow any one of the atheists to survive,” reads the post, which includes a graphic depicting Dorsey’s face in the cross sights of a gun.
The death threats appear to be in response to Twitter’s practice of blocking ISIS-related accounts on its network.
While Twitter is far from the only social media company to ban accounts for publishing graphic or obscene content, the network has been highlighted in the press recently as a primary ISIS recruitment tool.
As we reported previously, Twitter has been cracking down harder on ISIS militants in the past year for violating the company’s terms of service.
According to the Daily Dot, as many as 20,000 ISIS-supporting accounts were banned last month in a matter of days as the group prepared for an online freedom of speech protest.
Sunday’s message threatening Dorsey addresses the tensions between ISIS and Twitter directly.
“Your virtual war on us will cause a real war on you…” reads a translation of the post published by Buzzfeed News.
“We told you from the beginning it’s not your war, but you didn’t get it and kept closing our accounts on Twitter, but we always come back,” the message continues. “But when our lions [brave men] come and take your breath, you will never come back to life.”
Buzzfeed was first to report on the message as it started circulating among ISIS supporters on Twitter (of all places.)
“Our security team is investigating the veracity of these threats with relevant law enforcement officials,” said company spokesman Jim Prosser to the online news outlet.
This is not the first time ISIS has called for the assassination of Twitter employees. As CBS reported, an account on the social network was also shut down in September for issuing similar threats.