Blog

By Colin M. Fisher, UCL Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced big changes in how the company addresses misinformation across Facebook, Instagram and Threads. Instead of relying on independent third-party factcheckers, Meta will now emulate Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) in using “community notes”. These crowdsourced contributions allow users to flag content they ...

By Alastair Reed, Andrew Glazzard, Samantha Treacy Ever since the rapid rise of the so-called Islamic State and its effective use of online propaganda to recruit and radicalize individuals, countering the communication strategies of terrorists and violent extremists has been a top priority for governments and policymakers. Early approaches generally fell into two categories: disrupting ...

By David Wells Tariffs might not be the only trade obstacle with Trump’s America. “Censorship” could be the next test. There are multiple explanations for January’s changes in how Meta will moderate content across its platforms, including financial ones, the evolving views of CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Meta’s policies simply swaying in line with the political pendulum. ...

By Franziska Selzer To combat terrorist content online, platforms must take action. Meta, for instance, reported taking action, including removing content, covering disturbing content with a warning, and disabling accounts, against 30.8 million pieces of terrorist content on Facebook in the first three quarters of 2024. Of this content, over 99% was found by Meta ...

By Jonathan Pieslak On 14 June 2024, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a US-based “anti-hate” organization focusing primarily on antisemitism, posted a provocatively entitled article, “GAI Music Creation Tool Suno Has Been Weaponized to Promote Hate”. The report highlights the ways in which Suno, a generative artificial intelligence (GAI) music-creation platform, can be exploited to create ...

By Brenna Helm, Thomas J. Holt, Ryan Scrivens, Thomas W. Wojciechowski, and Richard Frank This article summarizes a recent study published in Crime and Delinquency. Involuntary celibates, or incels, have been of heightened interest to scholars and practitioners due to their ongoing engagement in misogynistic and violent discourse. Yet the incel subculture is complex, requiring ...

By Erin Stoner Trump’s election victory was met with a barrage of online discourse; his supporters celebrated his second electoral win and his opponents solemnly braced themselves for what the next four years may bring. In mere hours after his victory, out of the online woodwork emerged right-wing political commentators, high on success. Of note, ...

By Bo Min Keum Incel communities raise concerns about their misogyny and its potential to take radical forms and inspire extremist violence. However, they also exhibit considerable self-loathing and suicidal thoughts, often discussing methods to end one’s life and their term ‘rope’ serving as a common reference to suicide. I was curious to understand the ...

By Heron Lopes On March 6th, the EU DisinfoLab will host a webinar discussing the findings of “Melodies of Malice”, one of the papers featured in this blog post. For more details and registration, visit: EU DisinfoLab Webinars – Melodies of Malice. Introduction Research on extremism and counter-terrorism has long underscored the role of far-right and extremist music ...

By Kate Scott On December 6, 2024, the intelligence agencies of the Five Eyes alliance—Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States—released a jointly authored report outlining the increasing concern of violent extremism among youth. The report sheds light on how extremist content online is being used to recruit, groom, and mobilize ...