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Islamic State Threatens to Kill Twitter Co-Founder Jack Dorsey

Islamic State Threatens to Kill Twitter Co-Founder Jack Dorsey

Twitter Chairperson Jack Dorsey (Photo: AFP).

A new Internet post by the Islamic State is encouraging its members to kill a co-founder of Twitter and other employees of the social network.

The declaration, which was originally posted on JustPaste.it and then translated by BuzzFeed, is addressed to Jack Dorsey, who co-founded Twitter in 2006 and is now chairperson of its executive board. The threat takes issue with Twitter’s attempts to thwart the Islamic State’s dissemination of propaganda on the social network. The company frequently shuts down any official accounts of the Islamic State, also known as ISIL or ISIS, as they pop up.

Related: Terror Inc.: How the Islamic State became a branding behemoth

“Your virtual war on us will cause a real war on you,” the post reads. Though it was shared online by Islamic State supporters, its source has not been confirmed. “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.”

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An image from the post that depicts Jack Dorsey’s face beneath a gun target (Photo: JustPaste.it).

As I’ve reported in the past, the Islamic State often turns to Twitter as a vehicle to quickly spread content; it has posted beheading videos on the service and has attempted to recruit new members there, too. In some cases, actual fighters tweet from the frontlines of battle in Syria. A recent study showed that as many as 46,000 Twitter accounts were used by Islamic State sympathizers during a three-month period last fall.

Though Twitter’s official terms of use policy bans “direct, specific threats of violence against others,” the company told my colleague Michael Isikoff that it does not proactively monitor its networks for terrorist activity. This laissez faire attitude has spurred Congress to pressure Twitter to ramp up its efforts at blocking the terrorist organization’s online presence.

Related: Twitter under pressure to act more aggressively against terrorists

Now, it seems that the Islamic State is trying to intimidate Twitter executives with a call for all of its members around the globe to attack the company.

“For the ‘individual jihadi’ all over the world, target the Twitter company and its interests in any place, people, and buildings, and don’t allow any one of the atheists to survive,” the post reads.

A Twitter spokesperson told Yahoo Tech that the company is “investigating the veracity of these threats with relevant law enforcement officials.”

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