by Sean McCafferty, EU GLOCTER PhD Fellow, Seconded to CEP

This is the third and final entry in a three-part blog series discussing the evolution of al-Qassam Brigades’ content, the group’s content-dissemination strategies, and the policy implications for combating terrorist content online.

The previous two blog posts in this series address the evolution of al-Qassam Brigades (AQB) content and its dissemination. This final blog in the series will turn to regulation and the policy implications of the spread of AQB content over the last two years. The evolving nature of the AQB content and its sustained resilience and wide dissemination online presents a significant challenge to law enforcement, host service providers, and policy makers. 

The Challenge of AQB’s Online Resilience

Since October 7, 2023, the al-Qassam Brigades have consistently disseminated online propaganda, reaching a global audience despite the European Union’s (EU) introduction of landmark regulations in recent years: the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Terrorist Content Online (TCO). The DSA and TCO represent the EU’s most ambitious attempts to curb the spread of illegal content, including terrorist material. However, the persistence of AQB’s content—disseminated via Telegram, self-hosted websites, and dedicated apps—highlights significant gaps in enforcement and the need for a more proactive, collaborative approach.

Regulation

The EU has proactively developed key legislation, including the DSA and TCO, to combat the spread of illegal and unlawful content, including terrorist material, on digital platforms. The DSA, which came into full effect in 2024, imposes strict obligations on online platforms, search engines, and hosting services to remove illegal content, including terrorist propaganda, after the platforms have been notified of its presence by outside actors, and to implement robust content moderation and transparency measures. The TCO Regulation, which came into effect in 2022, requires platforms to take down terrorist content within one hour of receiving a removal order from authorities. Noncompliance can result in fines of up to six percent of yearly global turnover. However, neither regulation establishes an obligation for platforms to proactively remove terrorist content, instead continuing the current approach of relying on external parties—such as users or national competent authorities—to report such content after it appears. The DSA does contain mandatory risk assessment. However, this does not create an obligation to act proactively, despite the vast amount of data on social media and messaging services. A significant development occurred on October 23, 2025, when the European Commission issued a preliminary finding that TikTok and Meta were in breach of their obligations under the DSA. In its press release, the Commission emphasised that both companies had failed to provide simple and accessible mechanisms for reporting illegal content, including both child sexual abuse material and terrorist content.

Both regulations aim to disrupt the online presence of terrorist groups by holding platforms accountable; increasing cooperation with law enforcement; and preventing propaganda dissemination, radicalisation and recruitment online. Their combined effect is to create a safer online environment while balancing fundamental rights like freedom of expression, privacy, and data protection. 

In the German context, the 2017 Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz (Network Enforcement Act) predates the TCO but has been superseded following the implementation of the latter regulation and the DSA. The Network Enforcement Act was arguably more comprehensive than the TCO, with many of the same features, such as removal deadlines and financial penalties, but with a more robust enforcement mechanism and an emphasis on proactive measures by platforms to identify and remove illegal content. The lack of proactive incentives for platforms and the challenges of establishing effective legislation that supercedes national legislation links into the inherent complexity of establishing and implementing regulations across all member states. Nonetheless, the TCO and DSA are the most comprehensive attempts to establish regulation in a dynamic and challenging online environment at the EU level.

Gaps and Lack of Meaningful Disruption to AQB Propaganda 

The legislation has been debated and critiqued in a wide range of policy and academic contexts, including a detailed analyses of the DSA and its weaknesses by CEP. This piece does not seek to relitigate these debates but will focus on issues relevant to the evolution of content and the lack of evolution of the dissemination of Hamas propaganda.

As highlighted in the second blog post of this series, the majority of Hamas propaganda is disseminated through their own websites, Telegram channels, and their app. This cuts across several issues in our current approach to disrupting terrorist content.

Telegram has been inconsistent in removing AQB Telegram channels. Some channels were taken down in the aftermath of the October 7, 2023, attacks, but AQB have effectively retained their Telegram presence. With Telegram as a key space, issues over defining private or public channels have hampered the effectiveness of disrupting core dissemination spaces for terrorist groups. Nonetheless, Telegram has been targeted under the TCO. The company’s founder, Pavel Durov, was arrested in France in 2024, leading to anxieties in terrorist Telegram channels that the platform would begin working more cooperatively with authorities.

AQB content has been effectively disseminated from the group’s own website. The TSO amd DSA neglect the critical role of terrorist-hosted websites and self-hosted online spaces in the terrorist ecosystem. Terrorist-operated websites are often thought of as unreachable by law enforcement, practitioners and policymakers, due to their infrastructure often being hosted in jurisdictions with weak enforcement or that don’t designate groups like AQB terrorist organizations. However, the availability of their websites depends on key internet infrastructure providers such as Cloudflare which supplies services to the AQB website. More collaborative work with internet infrastructure providers may be needed to foster proactive and positive relationships in order to them to take action against terrorist operated websites. The DSA obligates search engines to identify and mitigate systemic risks, including the dissemination of terrorist content. These search engines are required to undertake annual risk assessments and implement measures addressing these risks. However, the DSA does not make concrete demands on how to mitigate these recognised risks. Search engines identifying and mitigating access to terrorist websites may be a way to limit the reach of key terrorist websites such as the AQB website. Collaboration with major search engines can prevent these websites from appearing through simple web searches, as they currently do, and thereby limit the mainstream reach of these sites. AQB’s dedicated app presents an even greater challenge, as it operates outside the direct reach of EU regulations unless it relies on EU-based hosting or infrastructure.

Policy Recommendations

The DSA applies not only to large platforms but also to hosting services, caching, and mere conduit services. This means that websites and apps, if they rely on EU-based hosting or infrastructure, can be subject to these rules. A closer look at how the DSA may be used to combat the issues of AQB content hosted on websites and apps may be needed.

Three key steps can be taken at the EU level to begin to disrupt AQB’s stable online ecosystem. Firstly, removal orders from national competent authorities under the TCO to Telegram should increase. This will force AQB to consistently reconstitute Telegram channels rather than leaving them with the steady Telegram presence of the last two years. Secondly, amongst the national competent authorities and at the EU level there should be a consensus on what is considered “private” channels. Lastly, work by national competent authorities and at the EU level should seek to collaborate under the DSA with major search engines to de-index AQB websites and ask infrastructure providers such as Cloudflare to remove their services for terrorist websites.

The DSA and TCO, particularly by focusing on sending removal orders and referrals to host service providers, has created a reactive rather than proactive content moderation environment. While implementation of those two measures represent important regulatory steps, it may set up an adversarial enforcement structure with host service providers rather than incentivising collaboration. For example, despite the DSA and TCO, Telegram’s removal of AQB channels has been reactive rather than proactive. While some channels were taken down after October 7, 2023, AQB has quickly reestablished its presence, often by creating new channels which have remained undisrupted. Advocating for increased proactive content moderation and collaboration is important and should be part of updated DSA and TCO provisions. This may be complex due to political and policy changes particularly at major social media companies.

Conclusion

The DSA and TCO represent a significant step forward in regulating terrorist content online. However, the continued proliferation of AQB’s propaganda—especially in the wake of the October 7 attacks—demonstrates that regulation alone is not enough. To achieve meaningful disruption, the EU must shift from reactive enforcement to proactive and legally mandated collaboration, address jurisdictional and technical loopholes, and ensure that all actors in the digital ecosystem are held accountable.

Both regulations are still in their infancy. The next few years will determine whether they can provide real world impact. If AQB content is a key test for the legislation amid geopolitical crises and heightened antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, more work needs to be done.