News and Media

The U.N. Security Council recently renewed the mandate of the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), the international peacekeeping force that has been present in Lebanon since 1978. Under pressure from the United States, the Security Council charged U.N. Secretary General António Guterres with finding ways to “increase UNIFIL’s visible presence, including through patrols and inspections.” But this may fall short in helping UNIFIL carry out its mission.

UNIFIL’s original mandate was to ensure Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanese territory and the assertion of Lebanese authority throughout the country. After Hezbollah’s 2006 war with Israel, the U.N. expanded UNIFIL’s mandate to assist the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) in “taking steps” to ensure that southern Lebanon remains free of unauthorized weaponry and “armed personnel.”  

Nonetheless, thanks to its patron Iran, Hezbollah has grown into a regional military player. Middle East security officials have documented how Hezbollah has more than tripled the number and lethality of its rockets and other weaponry since the 2006 war. Hezbollah’s participation in the Syrian civil war for the past five years alongside the Syrian army has directly shifted the balance of power in that conflict. We most recently witnessed this with Hezbollah’s arrangement—in coordination with the Syrian government—for ISIS fighters to be bused from near the Lebanese border to areas under the terror group’s control in Syria’s east.

UNIFIL has consistently lacked the authority to directly confront Hezbollah. And the Lebanese army has proven unwilling or unable—or both—to disarm the terror group. During a press tour of Hezbollah’s positions in southern Lebanon earlier this year, for example, Hezbollah fighters openly showed reporters rocket-propelled grenades and other artillery. When an Italian UNIFIL officer reportedly tried to clear the group from a restricted area near an Israeli listening post, a Lebanese army officer instead escorted the UNIFIL officer away.

Contrary to the facts on the ground, UNIFIL has repeatedly claimed that it has not witnessed any Hezbollah weapons entering southern Lebanon. In 2008, Colonel Marc Ollier of the French UNIFIL contingent said that he didn’t “believe Hezbollah's weapons figure in Resolution 1701.” According to a U.N. spokeswoman earlier this year, “UNIFIL has not observed any unauthorized armed persons … or found any basis to report a violation of the (cease-fire) resolution.” UNIFIL issued a similar statement in 2015.

Ahead of the Security Council’s debate, Lebanon called on the U.N. to renew UNIFIL’s mandate but without any changes. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley sharply criticized UNIFIL for allowing Hezbollah to rebuild its arsenal in southern Lebanon. Haley further accused UNIFIL’s commander of being “blind to what Hezbollah is doing.”

Both Lebanon and the United States were reportedly satisfied with the outcome of the U.N. debate, but it is now up to Guterres to determine how much authority UNIFIL will have to confront Hezbollah and prevent it from growing even stronger. Unless UNIFIL’s teeth are sharpened, Hezbollah will continue its military expansion in Lebanon and Syria. And that will be bad for everyone—except Iran.

You may be a notorious terrorist financier, but you can still use Instagram to raise money. At least that’s the case for U.N.-sanctioned Hajjaj bin Fahd al Ajmi, one of several Gulf-based donors to have funneled millions to al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria. Despite being sanctioned, Ajmi is still able to use Instagram to fundraise and win ad sponsorship deals, publishing more than 1,000 posts to more than 1.7 million Instagram followers. This status quo is unacceptable: Instagram needs to shut Ajmi down.

Ajmi has been sanctioned by the United Nations, United States, United Kingdom, and European Union for financing al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, the Nusra Front (also known as Jabhat Fateh al-Sham). The Kuwaiti-based sheikh is particularly adept at using social media as a fundraising platform. In 2012, he launched a fundraising campaign on Twitter to finance unspecified jihadist groups in Syria, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars and reportedly providing groups with weapons and other material support. The following year, Ajmi used Twitter and YouTube to solicit funds for an August 2013 militant offensive in Latakia, Syria, in which jihadist groups including the Nusra Front and ISIS massacred several hundred civilians. Human Rights Watch named Ajmi as one of the offensive’s “most prominent donors.” Nonetheless, Ajmi has used Instagram in recent years to actively solicit donations for terrorist-affiliated charities and has even received money through sponsored posts.

Through his Instagram posts, Ajmi has urged donations to terrorist-linked charities, such as Mercy International (depicted below), an organization accused of facilitating al-Qaeda’s 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya, and the Islamic International Charitable Organization, an organization with reported ties to Hamas. As in the example below, his posts frequently exploit the plight of victims in the Syrian civil war, highlighting the suffering of children to elicit sympathy and—most importantly—financial support.

On his Instagram account, Ajmi also posts advertisements for goods and services such as restaurants, real estate investments, and cars. Ajmi has publicly admitted to receiving sponsorship payments from these ads, which has helped him overcome the financial challenges of being widely sanctioned, according to the Wall Street Journal.

On first glance, it may seem like an oversight that Instagram has allowed an internationally-sanctioned terrorist financier to use its platform to fundraise for himself and for terrorist-affiliated charities. However, as a for-profit company (parent company: Facebook), Instagram has a financial incentive for   keeping Ajmi—with his 1.7 million followers—on its platform.                  

This should not be allowed to continue. On Instagram, Ajmi does not make any attempt to conceal his identity––or his status. In Arabic, his profile states his name in full (Hajjaj bin Fahd al Ajmi). In reference to a new terrorist designation by several Gulf countries, his description for several weeks read, “Not a terrorist. A new clip concerning the terrorist designation in the joint announcement” and directs the reader to a YouTube video entitled “Hajjaj al-Ajmi is not a terrorist.”

Ajmi's Instagram account description, screenshot from July 2017.

It is unconscionable that Facebook, Instagram’s parent company, allows a U.N.-designated terrorist like Ajmi to remain active, let alone use the platform to solicit donations for terrorist-linked charities and as a business opportunity for himself. Instagram’s Community Guidelines asserts that it is not a platform used to “support or praise terrorism.” Its parent company, Facebook, similarly claims that “social media should not be a place where terrorists have a voice. We want to be clear how seriously we take this.” And yet, it remains the case that Instagram is allowing an internationally-sanctioned al-Qaeda terrorist financier to run rampant on its platform, raising money for himself and other terrorist-linked actors.

It’s time for Facebook prove its “seriousness” and crack down on terrorist financing carried out in plain view on its platforms. It’s time to shut down Ajmi.

Despite Google’s stated commitment to removing extremist videos, and ISIS propaganda, the Counter Extremism Project (CEP) continues to identify violent extremist content on Google’s video sharing platform, YouTube.

CEP has identified three major categories where YouTube has failed to meet its own goals for the swift removal of known terrorist content: bomb-making videos, violent ISIS videos, and extremist influencers. The presence of this content poses a continued risk to public safety.

Bomb-making Videos on YouTube

CEP has repeatedly discovered an ISIS video with English subtitles released in November 2016 that offers step-by-step instructions for building a homemade anti-personnel bomb with easily and legally acquirable components. According to a June 24 article from the London-based Times, Manchester suicide bomber Salman Adedi viewed this video on YouTube to help construct his device which killed 22 people and wounded 250 others.

While YouTube has removed specific versions of this video, duplicates were re-uploaded to the website on June 24 and July 18.  It can take an average of five minutes for an individual to download a video for the purpose of storing the video and re-uploading it at a later date. If YouTube was sincere about its commitment to deploy hashing technology, as the company so claims, this instructional bomb-making video could not have been re-uploaded in the first place.

                    Bomb-making video discovered on July 18, 2017 (Counter Extremism Project)

ISIS Videos on YouTube

ISIS videos—both those depicting violent executions, and those used by the group to spread propaganda—continue to be readily available on YouTube.

YouTube has improved its response time since ISIS posted its first beheading video on the platform almost three years ago, but videos depicting shootings, beheadings, and suicide bombings can still be found consistently on YouTube, with some of these videos remaining live for days or weeks at a time. In some cases, YouTube has allowed violent content—like the execution of Jordanian pilot Muath Safi Yousef Al-Kasasbeh—to remain on its platform while putting an age-restricted warning label on the video, instead of immediately taking the video down for violation of terms of service. As a result of YouTube’s piecemeal approach to removing terrorist content, YouTube remains a favorite destination for ISIS’s news updates from official and semi-official outlets like Amaq and Muta News Agencies.

The issue goes beyond matters of propriety, and begs the question; what steps has YouTube immediately implemented to prevent terrorist organizations from using its platform to disseminate threats and propaganda. Google and YouTube must clarify its position on how the company will prevent the continued, systematic re-uploading of known terrorist content.

Extremist Influencers on YouTube

In addition to videos previously described, YouTube continues to allow an extensive array of videos by extremist influencers and preachers who use the platform to recruit and radicalize others. Unfortunately, many of these influencers have successfully used Google’s platform to reach their target audiences, and have influenced extremists to attempt or carry out acts of terror.

Anwar al-Awlaki: Anwar al-Awlaki has played a role in radicalizing dozens of U.S. and European extremists to attempt or carry out acts of terrorism. As CEP has found, videos of the notorious radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki are still widely available on the website. After tracking the presence of Anwar al-Awlaki content on YouTube for two years, CEP has found that Awlaki content is consistently—and in some cases increasingly—available on YouTube.

Search results for “Anwar al-Awlaki” on YouTube, for example, have risen from around 60,000 in December 2015 to more than 80,000 in June 2017. Despite Google’s claims to have meaningfully reduced the volume of extremist content on its platform, Google has yet to take a principled approach to the presence of Awlaki’s radicalizing lectures on its platform. For example, CEP found that a search for “Anwar al-Awlaki jihad” revealed only a nominal reduction, from 8,400 search results in December 2015 to 7,590 in June 2017.

Other Extremist Preachers on YouTube: Videos of lectures by U.S.-based preacher Ahmad Musa Jibril are also still available on YouTube. Jibril is notorious in part due to his popularity with ISIS foreign fighters in Syria, with an estimated 60 percent of them having followed him on Twitter, according to early estimates by ICSR. Most recently, one of the suspected terrorists in the June 2017 London Bridge attack was found to have watched Jibril’s online content. As of July 2017, Jibril’s YouTube page, https://www.youtube.com/user/AhmadMusaJibril/, remains live on YouTube and has amassed more than 16,500 subscribers.

Videos by another influential extremist preacher, British-born Abu Haleema, are also widely available on YouTube. The U.K. government banned Haleema from operating on social media platforms in 2015, but Haleema only had his videos blocked in that country following the London Bridge attack. Like Jibril, Haleema’s online lectures reportedly played a role in the radicalization of one of the June 2017 London Bridge Attackers. Nonetheless, his videos today remain readily accessible outside of the United Kingdom. A YouTube search for “Abu Haleema” yielded 13,600 results in July 2017, with one YouTube channel operating on his behalf having gathered more than 520,000 views.

Google’s Redirect Method

On July 20, 2017, Google formally announced the launch of its Redirect Method on YouTube, a program designed to identify users searching for ISIS-linked content on YouTube and expose them to advertisements and video playlists on YouTube that run counter to ISIS’s narratives.

Google highlights statistics purported to demonstrate how many YouTube users were “reached” and the amount of “minutes of video” users watched. The foregoing are metrics for measuring the efficacy of digital advertising – not for a counter radicalization program. For example, no information is provided about the individuals who watched the videos or whether or not any of them were, in fact, even on the path to radicalization.

One counter-narrative playlist designed by Google to undermine ISIS narratives, “Answering the Call,” was presented as an example of a successful case study for the Redirect Method. Although the video “reached” more than 100,000 viewers, the video was overwhelmingly unpopular among its viewing audience—receiving 57 dislikes compared to only 12 likes.  

Concerns about the Redirect program aside, the facts remain that counter-narrative content and voices continue to be drowned out by the high volume of extremist material on YouTube that remains readily available. Google’s stated desire to  reduce the terrorist recruitment threat on its platform continues to be contradicted by its persistence in hosting and promoting content by extremists including al-Qaeda recruiter Anwar al-Awlaki, a man whom former U.S. president Barack Obama deemed too dangerous to live, and who had played a role in radicalizing nearly 90 U.S. and European extremists.

Until Google takes the definitive step of permanently removing terrorist recruitment content, YouTube will continue to be the go-to source for those on the path to self-radicalization and terrorist violence.

In a June 18 blog post, Google discussed its plans to tackle terrorist videos on its platforms—in particular YouTube. Google—which has a market cap of more than $600 billion—pledged to scale up its technological and human capacity to identify content that violates company policies; issue warnings before inflammatory content in lieu of removing it; and expand its counter-radicalization efforts through public- and private-sector partnerships and targeted advertising tools.

The announcement from Google comes at a time when tech companies are under increasing scrutiny from governments concerned by the weaponization of the Internet by terrorists. YouTube, in particular, is also dealing with a revolt by advertisers whose ads were played before extremist and other objectionable material. While action taken to degrade the ability of terrorists to misuse popular Internet platforms such as YouTube should be commended, Google’s blog post lacks specific details and raises addition concerns about (1) the actual scope of extremist and terrorist content on its platforms and (2) the efficacy of their proposed solutions. Google owes the public and U.S. and European policymakers clear, comprehensive explanations with measurable solutions.

CEP has posed a series of questions and requests for additional information to better understand Google’s progress in detecting and removing terrorist and extremist content:

“First, we are increasing our use of technology to help identify extremist and terrorism-related videos... We have used video analysis models to find and assess more than 50 per cent of the terrorism-related content we have removed over the past six months.”

• How does Google/YouTube define terrorism?
• How many “terrorism-related” pieces of content has Google/YouTube removed in 2015, 2016, and 2017? Of these, how many were found by Google/YouTube? How many were found by other parties?
• How many total takedown notices concerning terrorism did Google/YouTube receive in 2015, 2016, and 2017? Of these notices, how many resulted in removal of content or accounts for terrorism?
• How many did Google/YouTube report to government/law enforcement?
• What specific action has Google/YouTube taken regarding online lectures by well-known propagandist and operative for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula Anwar al-Awlaki? Dozens of U.S. and European terrorists have been radicalized to violence by Awlaki. His online lectures, in particular, have continued to inspire Westerners to terror.

“Our engineers have developed technology to prevent re-uploads of known terrorist content using image-matching technology. We have invested in systems that use content-based signals to help identify new videos for removal… We will now devote more engineering resources to apply our most advanced machine learning research to train new ‘content classifiers’ to help us more quickly identify and remove extremist and terrorism-related content.”

• How much engineering resources are currently dedicated to remove extremist and terrorism-related content? What additional engineering resources will now be devoted for this purpose, specifically? What percentage of extremist and terrorist content is being detected by machine learning, image-matching technology, and human detection, respectively?
• What is the error rate for each technology being deployed?

“We will expand this programme [YouTube’s Trusted Flagger programme] by adding 50 expert NGOs to the 63 organisations who are already part of the programme, and we will support them with operational grants… We will also expand our work with counter-extremist groups to help identify content that may be being used to radicalise and recruit extremists.”

• What criteria did Google/YouTube use to vet and add to its Trusted Flagger program? Does Google/YouTube provide operational grants to all 50 expert NGOs and 63 organizations that are part of the program? Please provide a complete list of all participants in Google/YouTube’s Trusted Flagger program.
• If Google/YouTube is going to continue to outsource efforts to curtail and remove extremist and terrorist content from its platforms, it should be transparent about its relationship with NGOs and other civil society actors. Civil society cannot effectively hold private sector actors to account if they are beholden to, or restrained by, those same actors. What is the total amount of operational grants provided by Google to the NGOs and civil society organizations participating in YouTube’s Trusted Flagger program? What are the terms of the grant agreement YouTube signs with Trusted Flagger program participants? Are the funds earmarked for specific activities such as staff and terrorism and extremism experts who can report content on YouTube?
• Other than the Trusted Flagger program, how much of Google/YouTube’s overall budget is dedicated to content moderation and review staff? How many staff are active presently and what is their average wage/salary?

“Third, we will be taking a tougher stance on videos that do not clearly violate our policies — for example, videos that contain inflammatory religious or supremacist content; in future these will appear behind a warning and will not be monetised, recommended or eligible for comments or user endorsements. That means these videos will have less engagement and be harder to find.”

• How will Google differentiate between content that promotes terrorism (and should be removed) and so-called “inflammatory” content, which will remain on its platform albeit affixed with warning labels? Does Google/YouTube use a similar approach to other types of content on its platform, for example copyrighted content or pornography? Google/YouTube should clarify if this approach (i.e. affixing warning labels to certain inflammatory content) has a precedent with other forms of speech such as nudity and copyrighted material. If not, Google should explain why it is going to such great lengths to keep terrorist and extremist content on its platforms while removing other forms of non-violent content (such as nudity and copyrighted material) outright.
• What are the criteria and the process by which Google/YouTube selects videos to shield behind a warning? How will Google/YouTube keep the public informed about its determination to not remove such content?
• How does this new policy affect non-explicitly violent terrorist and extremist videos that have proven connections to violent actors and incidents (e.g. the radicalizing sermons of Anwar al-Awlaki and Ahmad Musa Jibril as well as bomb-making instructional videos)? Has Google/YouTube decided if videos of Awlaki and Jibril will be removed or simply feature a warning label?

“Building on our successful Creators for Change programme, promoting YouTube voices against hate and radicalisation, we are working with Jigsaw to implement the ‘redirect method’ more broadly across Europe. This promising approach harnesses the power of targeted online advertising to reach potential Isis recruits, and redirects them towards anti-terrorist videos that can change their minds about joining.”

• If Google/YouTube is involved in the creation of original content for promotion and dissemination on its platforms, can it credibly be characterized as a neutral third-party Internet actor?
• Can Google/YouTube elaborate on the purported success of these activities? How many individuals has Google/YouTube successfully turned away from extremism/terrorism through the Creators for Change program and “redirect method”?
• How exactly has Google/YouTube considered countering the radicalizing messages of Anwar al-Awlaki? Is the “redirect method” deployed against Awlaki content? What specific “anti-terrorist videos” are deployed in numbers sufficient to counter Awlaki’s messages?

“We have also recently committed to working with industry colleagues — including Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter — to establish an international forum to share and develop technology and support smaller companies, and accelerate our joint efforts to tackle terrorism online.”

• What specific technologies has Google/YouTube developed and shared with the international forum of industry colleagues? Is there an agreement among industry about how new technologies will be deployed?
• Is Google/YouTube sharing its database of known extremist and terrorist content with others in the forum? If so, how many pieces of content has Google/YouTube shared?
• Moreover, how much content has Google/YouTube contributed to the so-called “hashing coalition” announced in December 2016? Is there agreement that all content in the database will be removed across industry platforms? How much content has Google/YouTube removed as a result of the database?

“We think this strikes the right balance between free expression and access to information without promoting extremely offensive viewpoints.”

• It is well-known that Google/YouTube removes all types of content—including content that constitutes protected speech—and in particular pornography and copyrighted material from its platforms, at any time and without public discussion. Give this fact, Google should fully explain its process for removing other forms of content and speech from its platforms (e.g. pornography and copyrighted material) so that the public can clearly understand Google’s content detection and removal capabilities. Such an explanation would also provide a basis of comparison to measure and evaluate Google’s announced efforts for detection and removal with respect to extremism.
• What percentage of reported pornography and copyright violations is removed from Google/YouTube? How much is identified using human detection, artificial intelligence, and image-matching technology, respectively? How much of flagged copyrighted material and pornography is removed within 24 hours?
• How does Google define “free expression”?

To read Google’s June 18 blog post in full, click here.