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The purpose of this article is to inform the debate about strategies and options for countering online radicalization within the U.S. domestic context. Its aim is to provide a better understanding of how the Internet facilitates radicalization; an appreciation of the dilemmas and tradeoffs that are involved in countering online radicalization within the United States; and ideas and best practices for making the emerging approach and strategy richer and more effective. It argues that online radicalization can be dealt with in three ways. Approaches aimed at restricting freedom of speech and removing content from the Internet are not only the least desirable, they are also the least effective. Instead, government should play a more energetic role in reducing the demand for radicalization and violent extremist messages—for example, by encouraging civic challenges to extremist narratives and by promoting awareness and education of young people. In the short term, the most promising way for dealing with the presence of violent extremists and their propaganda on the Internet is to exploit their online communications to gain intelligence and gather evidence in the most comprehensive and systematic fashion possible.

The French Digital Council has been given a mandate to examine Article 9 of the bill on scaling up
counter-terrorism provisions. These provisions amend Article 6 of the Act of 21 June 2004 on confidence
in the digital economy (LCEN) by providing for the administration to block websites containing speech
and/or images constituting incitement to terrorism or in defence of terrorism. They also extend the scope
of the notification tools that technical service providers are bound to use.
The French Digital Council has held fifteen interviews with terrorism experts (sociologists, journalists and
association representatives), specialised lawyers and judges, civil society representatives, intelligence
agency members and digital professionals (full list available in the appendix) to be able to deliver as fully
informed an opinion as possible.

The independent Commission for Countering Extremism has published a legal review, to examine whether existing legislation adequately deals with hateful extremism.

ISD has analysed 100 websites linked to the far right and white supremacist communities to establish which tools, services or platforms are most commonly in use. This small sample is intended only as a snapshot of the broader landscape, but nonetheless
reveals some interesting trends which are worthy of discussion.

The undersigned human rights and digital rights organizations call on the participants of the trialogue meeting on the Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of Council on preventing/addressing the dissemination of terrorist content online to comply with the Charter of Fundamental Rights and discuss further amendments that fully respect freedom of expression, freedom of information and personal data protection of internet users.

The proliferation of extremist, jihadist and violence-inciting websites, blogs and channels in social media has long since become a major theme in security policy. Extremists and terrorists use the new technological tools to communicate with each other, to organise themselves and to publicise their ideas. Whereas terrorists in the previous millennium were still dependent on journalists to report their acts and to draw attention to their group and their ideology, potentially violent groups today are in a position to publish their story and their intentions unfiltered on the web, and to communicate with each other swiftly and effectively across national borders. Ever since the case of Australian teenager Jake Bilardi, who travelled to the territories of the so-called Islamic State (IS)
and in 2015, at the age of 19, committed a suicide attack in Ramadi (Iraq), however, it is not just online communication by extremists that is in focus, but also the phenomenon of online radicalisation. According to the current state of information, Bilardi converted to Islam without any direct influences from his immediate environment, radicalised himself exclusively via online media, and travelled to Syria with the help of online contacts. His case, and many other cases of Western recruits, raised the question of whether a process of radicalisation can take place exclusively online or if online propaganda is only one facilitating factor that promotes and perhaps accelerates radicalization, but is in itself not sufficient to explain the whole process. Unfortunately, there are still not enough systematic, empirical studies on this subject area and our knowledge is generally limited
to known perpetrator profiles. Nevertheless, some general statements can be made regarding online radicalisation.