Twitter says its internal controls are allowing it to weed out accounts being used for "promotion of terrorism" earlier rather than responding to government requests to close them down.
US and European governments have been pressuring social media companies including Twitter, Facebook and Alphabet's Google to fight harder against online radicalisation, particularly by violent Islamist groups.
Twitter said it had removed 299,649 accounts in the first half of this year for the "promotion of terrorism", a 20 per cent decline from the previous six months. Three-quarters of those accounts were suspended before posting their first tweet.
Less than one per cent of account suspensions were due to government requests, the company said, while 95 per cent were thanks to Twitter's internal efforts to combat extremist content with "proprietary tools", up from 74 per cent in the last transparency report.
Twitter defines "promotion of terrorism" as actively inciting or promoting violence "associated with internationally recognised terrorist organisations".
The vast majority of notices from governments concerned "abusive behaviour", which includes violent threats, harassment, hateful conduct and impersonation.
