Report

Since the fall of the Caliphate, the activities and overall threat posed by Western jihadists has undoubtedly diminished. 1 A recent study released by the Program on Extremism, for example, demonstrated a steady decline in jihadist activity in the United States (US) since 2020. In this three-year period, only twenty-nine Americans have been charged, compared ...

Deplatforming websites—removing infrastructure services they need to operate, such as website hosting—can reduce the spread and reach of extremism and hate online, but when does deplatforming succeed? This report shows that deplatforming can decrease the popularity of extremist websites, especially when done without warning. We present four case studies of English-language, U.S.-based extremist websites that ...

In this report, Tech Against Terrorism investigates the use of designation: a powerful tool available to governments to facilitate improved action against terrorist use of the internet in a way that upholds the rule of law. We detail how terrorist designation differs from one jurisdiction to another. We argue that these counterterrorism measures, whether online ...

The certification of the 2020 election drew a substantial crowd of far-right extremists, with 13% of individuals arrested for crimes committed at the Capitol on January 6th having ties to militia groups. Even before the 2020 election, a 2019 report highlighted the increasing popularity of QAnon conspiracy theories among militia members, a trend which only ...

This workbook teaches researchers, analysts and practitioners how different sorts of terrorist and violent extremist actors utilise financial technologies and cryptocurrencies to finance their operations. The process of terrorist adoption of financial technologies is spelled out for various organisations and can assist analysts to estimate whether and when a group or terrorist actor would embrace ...

The old military aphorism that the enemy gets a vote is oft forgotten in both Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C. This cliche is worth keeping in mind as Congress debates adjustments to Section 230 (230) of the Communications Decency Act. For starters, Silicon Valleys persistent inability to ground products in the knowledge that some users ...

This paper explores the problem of deception in online terrorism research. While conducting research into the growing phenomenon of female migration to Islamic State-held territory by Western females, we began following a Twitter account exhibiting suspicious activity. The account owner–believed to be a Canadian teenage female–indicated interest in learning more about joining the IS. We ...

Online abuse and extremism disproportionately target marginalised populations, particularly people of colour, women and transgender and non‑binary people. The core argument of this report focuses on the intersecting failure of Preventing and Counter Violent Extremism (P/CVE) policies and cybersecurity policies to centre the experiences and needs of victims and survivors of online extremism and abuse. ...

Researchers who study online terrorism and political violence face a broad spectrum of risks to their safety and wellbeing. Awareness of the challenges researchers face in this subdiscipline has remained relatively low for years. Since the launch of Islamic State’s propaganda campaign on the internet, which skilfully deployed scenes of death and dying to influence ...

This report provides a review of the research on the exploitation of gaming and gaming‑adjacent platforms by violent extremists and the policies seeking to mitigate the impact of that exploitation. There is increasing interest in the nexus of online gaming and (violent) extremism. This report builds on the work of the Extremism and Gaming Research ...