News and Media

YouTube’s actions continue to fall short of its rhetoric when it comes to fighting extremism. Despite very public announcements of new technologies, more content reviewers, and a stated dedication to preventing terrorists and extremist groups from using the site, YouTube is still lacking in three categories: the removal of Anwar al-Awlaki content; preventing the initial upload of new official ISIS content; and removing videos made by ISIS supporters. While YouTube has made progress in deleting of thousands of hours of gruesome content and videos that urge the use of violence, there is still a troubling amount of room for improvement.

After years of pressure, YouTube officially began to remove all Awlaki videos last November. A leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), Awlaki has been tied to 55 extremists in the U.S., either through direct communication while he was alive or through the proliferation of his sermons and lectures on platforms like YouTube. YouTube’s pledge to remove all examples of Awlaki content was praised on both sides of the aisle, with Senators Cotton and Feinstein both voicing their support. And yet, since then, Awlaki content remains on YouTube. Simple searches in late January revealed 14 Awlaki videos still on the site, including some that had been uploaded in December, long after YouTube’s ban. It is very likely that even more Awlaki videos have made their way back to the site, concealed by a modicum of sophistication. This calls into question YouTube’s long-term commitment to preventing banned content from being reintroduced onto the platform.

New ISIS videos can remain on YouTube for days. The company claims to remove extremist videos through hashing technology, which functions like a video fingerprint. Once a hash is created from a video, it can be used to prevent reuploads of that same footage. When applied correctly, hashing can indeed prevent unwanted extremist and terrorist propaganda from making it onto the platform in the first place. Unfortunately, it appears that YouTube lacks clear procedures and sufficient capacity for rapid identification of new content to create new hashes, which can be deployed to remove new ISIS propaganda films. In three recent cases, official ISIS videos calling for terrorist attacks were on the site for 2 days, 6 hours, and 3 hours, respectively, garnering thousands of views. In early January, the European Commission set a goal of 2 hours for the removal of terrorist content, which includes new videos as well as reuploaded content. While YouTube has improved the rate at which it removes reuploaded content, 2 days, and even 3 hours, is too long for terrorist content to remain active and sharable on the site.

Additionally, thinly-veiled pro-ISIS media groups are still active on YouTube. An English language channel identified as the “War and Media Agency,” which purports to be a documentary news program, has been on the platform for more than a month. Several of its videos have thousands of views, and the channel has more than 150 subscribers. The “War and Media Agency” is, in fact, an online pro-ISIS front that uses ISIS produced photos and a robotic voice generator to broadcast statements from ISIS’s Amaq News Agency. It is disconcerting that such a low level of subterfuge could fool both YouTube’s content reviewers and the site’s machine learning algorithms and vaunted artificial intelligence.

It has been almost three and a half years since the first ISIS beheading videos appeared on YouTube, and far longer since extremists have used the website to amplify their calls for violence. It is unacceptable that YouTube has not been able to fully solve either problem despite repeated assurances. The situation is compounded by YouTube’s lack of transparency regarding which videos have been hashed and how these hashes are deployed to the site. A more proactive and transparent approach will be critical to prevent the next terrorist organization, hate group, or propagandist from also making the site a pillar of their online strategy.

Jihadists have used the Israeli-Palestinian issue to advance their narrative of Muslim victimhood. It’s no surprise that jihadist groups were furious when President Trump decided to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. However, al-Qaeda and ISIS’s divergent responses to the announcement illuminate huge divides within the global jihadist movement. While al-Qaeda and its affiliates have tried to use Trump’s speech to unite jihadists against the United States and its Middle East allies, ISIS has instead primarily used the occasion to try to delegitimize rivals such as al-Qaeda and Hamas.  

Al-Qaeda and its affiliates have called for jihadists to unite against the so-called “Crusader-Zionist” alliance and their “puppet regimes” in the Muslim world.[1] Al-Qaeda’s leadership wrote that “the recognition of al-Quds (Jerusalem) is a blatant aggression by the Crusader Trump against the sanctities of Muslims -- a high-voltage shock for the Muslim ummah, which may perhaps awaken from its slumber.”[2] The terror group’s senior leaders have also targeted the region’s Muslim regimes, pleading, “Unite your ranks, coordinate your efforts, forget your disagreements…” and continue to wage jihad until Jerusalem is liberated from the Jews.[3]

Similarly, al-Qaeda affiliate al-Shabab issued a call to arms “in the name of Beit al-Maqdis (Jerusalem) and of purifying the blessed al-Aqsa Mosque from the filth of the Jews…”[4] Al-Shabab assured followers that although “we do jihad in East Africa…we have set an appointment in the battles for that blessed occupied land…”[5] For al-Qaeda and its affiliates, Trump’s announcement was an opportunity to self-identify as the brand capable of liberating Jerusalem while leading the larger fight against the United States and its allies and interests abroad.

ISIS, in contrast, took a more local approach, for example, using Trump’s words to delegitimize Hamas among Palestinians. ISIS’s Egyptian province, Wilayat Sinai, released a propaganda video dedicated to convincing its supporters of Hamas’s crimes of complicity. The video, “Millah Ibrahim,” describes multiple reasons why ISIS’s Palestinian supporters should turn against and attack Hamas—citing the 2014 ceasefire as an example of Hamas’s willingness to conspire with Israeli and Egyptian governments against Palestinian interests. Additionally, ISIS discusses Hamas’s failure to prevent U.S. recognition of Israel as a state. A Wilayat Sinai member exhorts ISIS’s Palestinian supporters: “Never surrender to them [Hamas]. Use explosives, silencers, and sticky bombs. Bomb their courts and their security locations, for these are the pillars of tyranny that prop up its throne.”[6]

ISIS’s Arabic-language al-Naba magazine fortified the argument by listing additional reasons why Palestinians should support ISIS against Hamas including: Hamas’s “belief in democracy as a religion and methodology;” their decision to resort “to arbitration of the international and local tyrannical laws, which contradict Allah’s (Glory Be to Him) Sharia;” their “loyalty to the tyrants and the apostates, and having affection for and cooperation with them, as clear in their situation with the tyrants of Iran and others;” and “coordinating and seeking help from the tyrants and their soldiers in fighting the monotheists in Wilayat Sinai and elsewhere.”[7]

While ISIS and al-Qaeda have both sought to capitalize on Trump’s Jerusalem announcement to mobilize supporters, their differing rhetorical approaches highlight the groups’ divergent goals. In Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere, al-Qaeda has attempted to minimize militants’ ideological differences and unite Islamists against what it characterizes as shared enemies. On the other hand, ISIS has used Trump’s words to outbid and eliminate rival jihadist and Islamist groups. Where al-Qaeda’s senior leadership has tried use the event to exert control over the global jihadist movement by portraying itself as Muslims’ defenders against a so-called “war on Islam,” ISIS has sought to undermine its rivals by alleging that past failures to liberate Palestine evidence complicity and impotence.

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[1] “Hatred Has Been Revealed From Their Tongues, and What Their Hearts Conceal is Much Worse,” General Leadership of al-Qa’eda, December 17, 2017.

ISIS’s media arm is struggling to find a way to report on the group’s recent military encounters, specifically its humiliating losses to the Syrian and Iraqi armies in Abu Kamal and al-Qaim, respectively. This problem is clearly reflected by ISIS’s coverage of recent battles in its weekly Arabic-language magazine, al-Naba. Analysis of recent articles show that the terror group is unconvincingly trying to put a positive spin on recent battlefield news coming out of Iraq and Syria and Syria for their supporters.

ISIS infamously promised the world that it was “remaining and expanding,” but the group’s media arm is struggling to adapt to the reality that the group is hemorrhaging territory, leaders, and fighters. The challenges facing ISIS’s media operatives are apparent in the latest editions of al-Naba, a valuable means for ISIS to distribute “news” pertaining to the so-called caliphate and its various branches to its Arabic-speaking followers. In particular, the magazine’s coverage of ISIS’s unsuccessful military confrontations in eastern Syria and western Iraq represents, at best, a feeble attempt to reframe those defeats.

Since ISIS lost the critical strongholds of Abu Kamal and al-Qaim in the fall, there has been an even greater divergence between ISIS media claims and realities on the ground. Al-Naba has devoted significant coverage to these battles while intentionally neglecting any mention of ISIS’s territorial losses. Articles like “Soldiers of the Caliphate Repulse the Nusayri (a derogatory term for Alawites) Army East of Abu Kamal and Destroy 17 of the Apostate’s Vehicles,” “Abu Kamal Under the Caliphate’s Authority: The Nusayri Army Incurs Heavy Losses on its Flanks,” and “Soldiers of the Caliphate Attack the Nusayri Army on the Outskirts of Abu Kamal: 14 Apostates Are Killed and A Number of Vehicles Are Destroyed” are part of a concerted attempt to convince readers that ISIS continues to make military gains in Syria and Iraq.

Similarly, the group’s coverage of events in ISIS’s so-called wilayats—other territories officially recognized by ISIS leadership—also ignores the broader story of ISIS’s territorial and leadership losses in those areas. For instance, recent al-Naba articles discuss a “martyrdom operation against a gathering of the apostate Afghan party” that left “dozens dead and wounded,” the group’s “assassination of a Somali police officer,” the damaging of Houthi vehicles in Yemen, and the “liquidation” of alleged apostates and spies in countries like Libya, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Egypt.

Another way that ISIS media gives the illusion of continued success is through the group’s coverage of its international terrorist attacks, including its claims of responsibility for attacks in Las Vegas and New York City. A recent al-Naba infographic entitled, “Security Operations Outside the Islamic State During the Year 1438 (October 3, 2016-September 21, 2017),” outlines the methods of attack and the casualty counts for 48 different operations that the group claimed in 19 different states, including Tunisia, Britain, Russia, Bangladesh, Turkey, Germany, Jordan, Indonesia, America, Palestine, Iran, Kenya, Spain, Sweden, Belgium, Italy, and Australia.

Additionally, the terrorist group’s Arabic-language media is simultaneously preparing supporters for hardships, setbacks, and struggles. ISIS media has framed military reversals as temporary Ibtila’a (tests from Allah) meant to purify ISIS’s ranks of hypocrites and disbelievers. Al-Naba articles draw heavily upon the group’s own history of booms and busts as well as early Islamic history in an attempt to reassure ISIS followers that if they remain committed to the group’s manhaj (methodology), vision, and mission, Allah will grant them success in the end.

A recent article entitled “O Abbas! Call out the People of As-Samurah” from al-Naba #106 uses Surah al-A’la 9-15—a Quranic verse—to frame its military setbacks as tests from Allah designed to weed out the hypocrites from ISIS’s ranks. According to the article, “Allah Almighty said. ‘So remind, if the reminder should benefit; He who fears (Allah) will be reminded. But the wretched one will avoid it–(He) who will (enter and) burn in the greatest Fire, neither dying therein nor living. He has certainly succeeded who purifies himself. And mentions the name of the Lord and prays.” The implication is that those who abandon ISIS during times of hardship will “burn in the greatest Fire” while those who remain true to its cause are upholding their obligation to Allah and will be granted final victory over Islam’s alleged enemies.

ISIS’s staying power and appeal is rooted in the group’s claims of maintaining a well-functioning Islamic state governed in strict accordance with sharia law, its battlefield successes, and international terrorist attacks. With the first two claims being increasingly difficult to convincingly fabricate, international terror attacks represent the most immediate lifeline that allows ISIS to demonstrate that the group remains active and triumphant. 

Tech Against Terrorism’s Knowledge Sharing Platform (KSP), unveiled November 29 at the United Nations headquarters in New York City, was billed as an effort to provide practical advice to help tech companies and startups combat terrorists’ and extremists’ misuse of their technologies while respecting human rights. Unfortunately, it appears that the new platform lacks seriousness and depth and may have been designed to provide U.N.-sanctioned cover for the tech industry.

Tech Against Terrorism is a project implemented by the ICT4Peace Foundation pursuant to U.N. Security Council resolution 2354 (2017) and the U.N. Counter-Terrorism Committee Comprehensive International Framework to Counter Terrorist Narratives (S/2017/375). As part of its U.N. mandate, Tech Against Terrorism works to bridge the gap between large and small tech companies in terms of applying best practices and tools for removing and countering extremist material on their platforms. That effort resulted in the creation of the KSP, which lists such tools, resources, and best practice guidelines on its website, http://ksp.techagainstterrorism.org/.

Of course, Tech Against Terrorism emphasizes that its work, at the core, respects human rights and free speech. The rhetoric is commendable, but its actions suggest something else.

The first panel discussion at the KSP launch event included a representative from Weibo, China’s version of Twitter. Ms. Gu Haiyan, general counsel of the company, spoke about how Weibo monitors its online community for content and activities that could “endanger national unity, national security, or ethnic unity.” Human Rights Watch has specifically cited this language as a means for allowing the Chinese government to harm the work of foreign NGOs on issues it deems sensitive. The government is also, of course, known for holding human rights activists and attorneys in arbitrary detention, limiting freedom of expression, restricting religious practices, and failing to protect people from discrimination on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity, according to the human rights watchdog. Weibo’s mere presence at the event therefore points to a lack of seriousness in terms of respecting human rights and free speech.

Several speakers also endorsed using the KSP as a framework for tech companies to continue to “self-regulate.” Permitting for-profit companies to self-regulate requires complete trust in the very same tech companies that have been slow to react to online harassment, the proliferation of terrorist material, and Russian election meddling. The concept of self-regulation would never be afforded to other business sectors. As for-profit entities, the tech sector is no different than the auto, chemical, oil, and financial services industries.

Discussions also mentioned the importance of transparency and accountability. But again, Tech Against Terrorism and its KSP does not seem to practice these values. Information about the KSP is available online, but exact details about what tech companies have agreed to as best policies and practices remains hidden to the general public and/or policymakers. Rather, KSP’s key materials are only available to member tech companies. Keeping these materials hidden behind locked pages is not transparent and prevents the public and policymakers from holding tech companies accountable to their promises.

Tech Against Terrorism’s KSP seems more like a process for tech companies—large and small—to publicly show their commitment to combatting online terrorist content without having to deliver on those commitments.

Tech companies become a member of the KSP by (1) taking a “quick survey” that is supposed to assess the risks the platform faces from terrorists’ misuse; (2) taking another “quick survey” that evaluates the companies’ means to defend itself against misuse; and (3) creating a Terms of Service that “suit” the company and taking a voluntary pledge to respect human rights and free speech. Once these steps are completed, member tech companies can proudly display the “Tech Against Terrorism Trustmark” on their website. 

Quick surveys and voluntary pledges are not serious tools to help ensure tech companies are matching the online extremist threat with effective and consistent action. Indeed, the KSP seems designed as a tool to allow tech companies to acquire the U.N. imprimatur—a seal of approval that may garner some positive press and appeal to investors and advertisers. The KSP is but another example of tech companies valuing profits and reputation over substantive actions.