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VOX-Pol Blog post.

There can be few greater fears for a parent than their child being contacted by a stranger, indoctrinated with an extreme ideology, and encouraged to join a violent movement, all while accessing the internet from their bedroom. Children’s smartphones and computers
may be portals to the most dangerous places on earth. The use of the internet, and more specifically social media, by violent extremists is certainly nothing new. The technical skills and proficiency displayed by groups such as ISIS have been causing concern for governments, law enforcement, industry, schools, religious leaders, and parents around the world. In reality the radicalization of children is rare and particularly nuanced, and far from a linear process that exclusively occurs online. While the media have reported high-profile cases, such as the teenagers from Chicago who tried to leave the United States and join ISIS or the three girls from the United Kingdom who traveled through Turkey to Syria the frequency and nature of conversion to violent extremism is a lot more complex than often reported. Evidence from search histories, online interactions and social media profiles suggest that contact is being made by those intent on radicalizing others. However, while information can be sought and contact can be initiated, complete conversion to a violent ideology is not happening in isolation online. That is to say that the internet is serving as a facilitator, not a direct means of recruitment. In any case action needs to be taken to safeguard children and young people from these risks.

Freedom of Speech, the War on Terror, and What’s YouTube Got to Do with It: American Censorship during Times of Military Conflict

Moonshot partnered with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to analyze US search traffic in response to the threats posed by white supremacist narratives and ideology in the US this past year. The dominant socio-political events of 2020-2021—the COVID-19 pandemic, the widespread BLM protests and counter-protests, and the presidential election—coalesced to create fertile ground for white supremacists and other violent extremist movements to mobilize and recruit. From 18 August 2020 – 7 March 2021, we recorded 511,759 white supremacist searches across the United States. We identified trends such as anti-Black search traffic, interest in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, and a sustained appetite for “The Great Replacement” conspiracy theory. Ultimately, we found that offline events seemed to catalyze search traffic for extremist content online.

Extremist groups’ online recruitment mechanisms frequently exploit the wide range of grievances and vulnerabilities experienced by individuals at-risk of radicalisation. While it is widely accepted that mental health and wellbeing play a vital role in resilience to violent extremism, most approaches tend to focus on preventing violent extremism through purely ideological means and are not sufficiently tailored to the individual at-risk.

In an effort to understand this audience further and, more importantly, the most effective means of preventing violent extremism, Moonshot conducted an experiment to assess the propensity among at-risk users in Indonesia to engage with ideological counter-content compared to psychosocial support content. The data gathered during this pilot indicate that psychosocial support is an area of unmet need among some of the individuals most vulnerable to violent jihadist recruitment online in Indonesia, and that this population is open to engaging with online support.

The Facebook Redirect Programme (FRP) is designed to combat violent extremism and dangerous organisations by redirecting users who have entered hate or violence-related search queries towards educational resources and outreach groups. A pilot of the programme was launched with delivery partners Life After Hate in May 2019 and Exit Australia in September 2019. It was specifically designed to ensure that individuals searching for white supremacist and/or neo-Nazi communities on Facebook would be offered authentic, meaningful and impactful support off-platform. The purpose of this pilot was to test the programme design and inform future deployments targeting both new geographies and other hate-based communities. Moonshot was contracted by Facebook to evaluate the pilot period of programme performance and make recommendations for future deployments. This report evaluates the pilot programme by examining:
-Facebook’s use of keywords and the safety module as a method of redirecting people off-platform;
-The full user journey from Facebook to delivery partner landing pages;
-The extent to which the pilot can be considered a proof of concept for future deployments.