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The apocalyptic narrative of the Syrian civil war promoted by the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group in 2014 had galvanised around a hundred radicals in Malaysia who subsequently migrated to Iraq and Syria. At least forty-five of them propagated their jihadist cause online resulting in the mushrooming of online extremism in the country. The growth spans over five years (2013-2017) in two phases, one led by Muhammad Lotfi Arifin’s network of online followers and the other by Muhammad Wanndy Muhammad Jedi’s online supporters and sympathizers. Lotfi and his network popularised the concept of ‘jihad’ from the perspective of militant groups, while Wanndy lured vulnerable online followers deeper into the later stages of violent radicalisation. The trajectory of Malaysia’s online violent radicalism from Lotfi to Wanndy was coincidental rather than deliberate, signifying the ‘funnel’ process of radicalisation. This process is synced with the terrorists’ switch from online public platforms to encrypted and private ones.

VOX-Pol Blog post.

An empirical study by the Israel Internet Association analyzes the manner and quality of response by various social media platforms to 447 verified and confirmed reports of harmful content. These reports were submitted to the platforms by the Association’s Internet Safety Hotline, recognized by most platforms as an official Trusted Flagger, after meticulously confirming that all content reported explicitly violated the relevant platforms’ content policies.  The study considers all reports verified and sent to the platforms by the Hotline team between October 7 and December 7, 2023 (the first two months of the Israel-Hamas war) through official channels, the response received from the platforms to these reports, and actions taken or not taken by the platforms in response to the reported content. Parameters evaluated include: response time, the nature and quality of response as a function of content type, and whether the platforms’ actions matched their public commitments to addressing online threats in the wake of the Hamas attacks.

The findings are troubling, and show that response times were exceedingly slow, with little to no action on weekends. Handling of content requiring manual review or contextual understanding was notably poor, revealing significant differences between content types and across different platforms. We show that the same platforms have succeeded in similar situations in other countries, suggesting that success is possible when appropriate resources are channeled into achieving it. We present detailed recommendations as to how to remedy the present situation, and emphasize that responsibility lies not only with the platforms but also with governments and legislators, who permit these companies to operate with minimal transparency and accountability.

VOX-Pol Blog post.

VOX-Pol Blog post.

Debates around the effectiveness of high-profile Twitter account suspensions and similar bans on abusive users across social media platforms abound. Yet we know little about the effectiveness of warning a user about the possibility of suspending their account as opposed to outright suspensions in reducing hate speech. With a pre-registered experiment, we provide causal evidence that a warning message can reduce the use of hateful language on Twitter, at least in the short term. We design our messages based on the literature on deterrence, and test versions that emphasize the legitimacy of the sender, the credibility of the message, and the costliness of being suspended. We find that the act of warning a user of the potential consequences of their behavior can significantly reduce their hateful language for one week. We also find that warning messages that aim to appear legitimate in the eyes of the target user seem to be the most effective. In light of these findings, we consider the policy implications of platforms adopting a more aggressive approach to warning users that their accounts may be suspended as a tool for reducing hateful speech online.