News and Media

Ahmad Musa Jibril is an Islamist preacher well-known for being an influential jihadist voice in Syria and for having radicalized Khuram Shazad Butt, one of three London Bridge attackers who killed eight people and wounded almost 50 others on June 3, 2017. Despite Jibril’s role in inciting horrific violence, Google-owned YouTube shockingly declared two years ago that Jibril’s videos did not violate the company’s Terms of Service. Today, Jibril’s lectures remain freely available on Twitter, YouTube, and other social media platforms and his messages continue to resonate with extremists and jihadists.

CEP today released the eighth of a nine-part video series featuring CEP Senior Adviser Dr. Hany Farid , a professor at the University of California at Berkeley. In this week’s video, titled " Pressure Points ," Dr. Farid calls for a collective effort from academics, NGOs, and the public at large, to ensure tech companies do their part to make the Internet a safer place. Despite the proliferation of extremist content online, the right set of pressure points can result in a fundamental change in the way we think about online platforms and how said platforms operate.

For more than 40 years, William Luther Pierce’s The Turner Diaries has served as a “ Handbook for White Victory ” for white nationalists around the world. The book has directly inspired at least three terror attacks, including the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people. As part of its continuing series spotlighting the worst of the worst online extremists and content, CEP is highlighting the real-world ramifications of the continued online availability of The Turner Diaries .

CEP today released the seventh of a nine-part video series featuring CEP Senior Adviser Dr. Hany Farid , an incoming professor at the University of California at Berkeley. Titled “ Products & Consumers ,” Dr. Farid urges end users to question the inherent value of tech companies and the services they offer, as the status quo of giving away free products has led to everything from data privacy breaches to the proliferation of online extremism.

CEP Executive Director David Ibsen issued a statement today in response to Google-owned YouTube announcing a new policy that read in part: "Instead of simply enforcing its long-standing community guidelines consistently and transparently, YouTube has once again resorted to big tech’s usual tired PR playbook: publicizing a new policy change via the media only after a highly publicized incident, namely that of a well-known YouTube personality harassing a Vox journalist, which resulted in negative publicity for the company."

Notorious al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula ( AQAP ) propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki was killed in a U.S. drone strike in 2011, but his death did not silence him. Awlaki’s lectures continued to live on in the Internet and inspire extremism and violence. However, after years of advocacy from CEP , in November 2017, Awlaki’s online presence on YouTube was reduced from 70,000 results to dozens. Unfortunately, many other extremists remain online and their works also calling for hate, terrorism, and violence are still all too accessible.

CEP today released the sixth of a nine-part video series featuring CEP Senior Adviser Dr. Hany Farid , a professor at the University of California at Berkeley. In this week’s video, titled “ Advertising ,” Dr. Farid asserts that the current business model for tech companies, free services in exchange for personal data, has created an Internet “wild west.” For end users, this combination has led to, among other things, the proliferation of online extremism and data breaches. We must now begin to think of ways to mitigate this behavior, including legislation.

Earlier this year, CEP highlighted the online presence of dangerous extremist propagandists and notorious extremist content with links to violence in its Extremism Spotlight series. Continuing to allow this material to remain online to radicalize followers and incite violence is inexplicable, especially in light of Google-owned YouTube’s decision in November 2017 to remove notorious al-Qaeda propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki from its platform in a “ watershed moment .”