Facebook, Twitter May Have to Report Terrorists By Law

Congress wants social media to take action on terrorist activity. Lawmakers introduced a bill that would require social media companies to report online terrorist organizations.

In an exclusive interview with the FOX Business Network’s Jo Ling Kent, the bill’s author Congressman Ted Poe, (R-Texas), said the proposal to combat terrorist inspired sites utilizes the same strategy to bring down child-porn sites.

“The bill requires a strategy where we work with the private social media companies to bring out the terror sites. They used social media sites to recruit but also to raise money and also to spread their propaganda.”

Rep. Poe said Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) “by far” was the worst offender of not bringing down terrorist sites.

“There [are] 40,000 terrorist sites -- handles on Twitter. Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) and YouTube (NASDAQ:GOOG) have done a pretty good job of bringing them down. We just want the social media companies to bring them down, including Twitter. You don’t have as a foreign terrorist organization a constitutional right to use American companies to spread hate and propaganda and recruit,” he said.