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Hash Sharing Working Group:  As technologies, content, and types of violent extremist and terrorist groups change, GIFCT continuously reviews its definitions and parameters to evolve in line with trends and member needs. This group reviewed GIFCT’s Hash-Sharing Database inclusion criteria and proposed enhancements to improve its transparency and accuracy. The National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) worked with GIFCT to produce a set of concrete recommendations for Enhancing Transparency and Accuracy in GIFCT’s Hash-Sharing Database. GIFCT will be implementing recommendations throughout 2025 to ensure the database remains effective and impactful in cross-platform counterterrorism efforts.

VOX-Pol Blog post.

VOX-Pol Blog post.

Does the URL referral structure of websites lead users into ‘rabbit holes’ of unreliable content? Past work suggests algorithmic recommender systems on sites like YouTube lead users to view more unreliable content. However, websites without algorithmic recommender systems have financial and political motivations to influence the movement of users, potentially creating browsing rabbit holes. We address this gap using browser telemetry that captures referrals to a large sample of domains rated as reliable or unreliable information sources. Our results suggest the incentives for unreliable sites to retain and monetise users create rabbit holes. After landing on an unreliable site, users are very likely to be referred to another page on the site. Further, unreliable sites are better at retaining users than reliable sites. We find less support for political motivations. While reliable and unreliable sites are largely disconnected from one another, the probability of traveling from one unreliable site to another is relatively low. Our findings indicate the need for additional focus on site-level incentives to shape traffic moving through their sites.

The terrorist attacks in Norway in 2011 and New Zealand in 2019 have revealed that the far-right worldwide uses the memory of the Yugoslav wars for online mobilization. Scholars working on memory activism usually deal with the liberal, self-critical memory emerging from the bottom-up activism of human rights groups while neglecting the activism of the far-right. This article fills the gap by addressing the global circulation of two memes, Remove Kebab and Pepe the Frog, as examples of far-right memory activism. In order to address the transnational circulation of memes as memory activism, this article employs the concept of ‘traveling memory’ while relying on multimodal discourse analysis to unveil the processes of memetic transformation, imitation, iconization and narrativization. The analysis reveals an alternative memory of Yugoslav wars that depicts Serbia as the first case of ‘white genocide’ in Europe, reversing the roles of war criminals and victims while propagating violence and celebrating genocide. The article argues that memory studies can no longer ignore memory production of far-right communities and, at the same time, outlines the method for examining far-right digital memory activism, revealing a whole set of mnemonic practices developed among the anonymous fringe communities of the far-right.