After applications campaign against it … ISIS is looking for alternatives!
by Marwa Mahmoud
After a campaign targeting his social media accounts, ISIS began using a new online instant messaging platform.
The Digital Media Center in Iraq stated in detail that the intensified campaign launched by the companies owning the platforms on the channels of the Telegram application prompted the terrorist organization to search for alternative messaging platforms or applications in which its members could publish and market their activities.
He added, “The technicians in the organization have invited their members to use an application that has more secure specifications, they think, than other platforms.”
The Center also suggested that there are ISIS channels on the new application that include thousands of subscribers and names of their official agencies that publish their news, activities and pictures of their operations that are not permitted on the rest of the platforms given the existence of the notification feature on the channels of the application.
It is notable that the media platforms, led by Twitter and Facebook, had launched a campaign in the past against the accounts of the terrorist group ISIS, and Facebook announced a while ago that it was combating all its terrorist propaganda activities and did not support it, and that it had deleted several of the organization’s accounts.
Facebook confirmed that it had removed or placed warning signs on 1.9 million extremist content related to ISIS in the first three months of the year, which is nearly twice that content compared to the previous quarter.
Years ago, Facebook, in parallel with YouTube, began adopting new technology that enables automatic identification of extremist content and its removal.
The new technology made it possible to block videos from ISIS and similar organizations faster and before they became widespread.
In turn, at the beginning of 2016,Twitter launched a massive campaign to combat hate speech and extremist content on its platform.
The popular social networking site also announced that it had closed more than 125,000 accounts praising terrorism within six months.
Around the time, he said that he had expanded the number of teams responsible for monitoring alerts of information building up on terrorism. He also managed to reduce the time needed to respond to these alerts and close terrorist accounts, as well as to prevent them from reappearing.
The site has also developed its automatic monitoring tools.
It is interesting that the networking sites are still struggling to combat extremism across their channels, due to the numerous critiques they have received in the past, and they spoke of a potential lack of respect for the violent positions that provoke extremism.
