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VOX-Pol Blog post.

This article argues that the Islamic State’s cyber jihad, fully launched in 2014, is currently undergoing a regression that is demonstrated by the weakening of its quality, coverage and effectiveness. Comparing the character, major forms and popularity of Daesh’s releases from 2014 and 2015 with its most up-to-date productions, one can notice evident alterations signaling the long-awaited, but limited as yet, impairment of the “Caliphate’s” propaganda machine, composed of such specialized cells as the Amaq News Agency, al-Furqan Media, al-I’tisam Foundation, al-Himmah Library, or the al-Hayat Media Center. This transition is caused by a multitude of factors, with both offline and online origins.

Terrorists and violent extremists are manipulators seeking to exploit stress factors in our societies. The Covid-19 pandemic, its ensuing lockdown measures, as well as the spread of related mis- and disinformation online, thus represented an almost ideal opportunity for malevolent actors to exploit. Far-right violent extremists, in particular, quickly jumped on the opportunity offered by the Covid-19 crisis to anchor their hateful ideas into the mainstream and recruit new members. Whilst manifesting itself mostly online, this exploitation was not limited to the online sphere. It materialised in real world events as violent extremists blended themselves into anti-lockdown protests and as terrorists’ plans were eventually thwarted. Whilst the tech sector promptly responded to the wave of mis- and disinformation, the rapid changes in content moderation policy bear important consequences for the future of content moderation and freedom of expression online. Indeed, the global tech sector, especially social media and content-hosting platforms, was particularly quick to respond to the spread of Covid-19 disinformation and conspiracy theories. In this insight piece, Tech Against Terrorism analyses how far-right violent extremists exploited the instability caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and what the tech sector’s response means for online freedom of expression and platforms’ accountability.

The COVID-19 pandemic led to the creation of a new protest movement, positioned against government lockdowns, mandatory vaccines, and related measures. Efforts to control misinformation by digital platforms resulted in take downs of key accounts and posts. This led some of these protest groups to migrate to platforms with less stringent content moderation policies, such as Telegram. Telegram has also been one of the destinations of the far right, whose deplatforming from mainstream platforms began a few years ago. Given the co-existence of these two movements on Telegram, the article examines their connections. Empirically, the article focused on Irish Telegram groups and channels, identifying relevant protest movements and collecting their posts. Using computational social science methods, we examine whether far-right terms and discourses are present and how this varies across different clusters of Telegram Covid-19 protest groups. In addition, we examine which actors are posting far-right content and what kind of roles they play in the network of Telegram groups. The findings indicate the presence of far-right discourses among the COVID-19 groups. However, the existence of these groups was not solely driven by the extreme right, and the incidence of far-right discourses was not equal across all COVID-19 protest groups. We interpret these findings under the prism of the mediation opportunity structure: while the far right appears to have taken advantage of the network opportunity structure afforded by deplatforming and the migration to Telegram, it did not succeed in diffusing its ideas widely among the COVID-19 protest groups in the Irish Telegram.

Les terroristes et les extrémistes sont avant tout des manipulateurs qui cherchent à exploiter les facteurs de stress présents dans nos sociétés.La pandémie de Covid-19, les mesures de confinement qui en ont découlé ainsi que la propagation de la mésinformation et de la désinformation en ligne qui y sont liées sont donc des conditions idéales à exploiter pour certains acteurs malveillants. Les partisans de l’ultradroite, en particulier, ont rapidement saisi l’occasion offerte par la crise du Covid-19 pour ancrer leurs idées dans le débat public et recruter de nouveaux membres. Bien qu’elle se manifeste principalement en ligne, cette exploitation ne s’est pas limitée à la sphère virtuelle et s’est matérialisée dans des événements réels, par exemple lorsque des extrémistes violents se sont mêlés aux protestations contre le confinement et les restrictions sanitaires et que des plans d’attaques terroristes ont été contrecarrés. Alors que le secteur technologique a rapidement réagi à la vague de désinformation, les changements rapidement apportés aux politiques de modération des contenus en ligne ont déjà des conséquences importantes pour l’avenir de la modération de contenus et de la liberté d’expression en ligne. En effet, le secteur technologique mondial, notamment les réseaux sociaux et les plateformes d’hébergement de contenus, a réagi particulièrement rapidement à la propagation des théories de désinformation et de conspiration liées au Covid-19. Dans cette note, Tech Against Terrorism analyse comment les partisans de l’ultradroite ont exploité l’instabilité causée par la pandémie de Covid-19, et ce que la réponse du secteur technologique signifie pour la liberté d’expression en ligne et la responsabilité des plateformes.

The Courage Against Hate initiative has been brought together by Facebook for the purpose of sparking cross-sector, pan-European dialogue and action to combat hate speech and extremism. This collection of articles unites European academic analysis with practitioners who are actively working on countering extremism within civil society.