U.S. Urging Twitter to Shut Down Taliban Accounts

But Twitter shows no signs of caving in as @alemarahweb continues its online propaganda battle.

U.S. lawmakers are putting the pressure on Twitter to cancel accounts used by the Taliban to promote their insurgency in Afghanistan, but the social networking site is so far refusing to do so. Led by Senator Joseph Lieberman, the handful of legislators say that allowing the Taliban to broadcast their message in English, Pashto, and Arabic amounts to supporting terrorism. Twitter representatives shot back, saying that the U.S. government doesn't have the Taliban listed as an official terrorist group, so hosting their tweets does not amount to providing "material support" for the organization. The English account, @alemarahweb, typically broadcasts propagandist micro-messages on the site and links to longer-length "news" stories highlighting battlefield triumphs. It has, at last count, 5,848 followers.