News and Media

CEP Senior Advisor Ian Acheson, a former U.K. jail governor who led the independent review into extremism in prisons, in an opinion piece in the Sun newspaper, discusses the need for ISIS propagandist Anjem Choudary to "disappear from public consciousness" and the prison "separation" program he championed.

While it has appeared that ISIS’ long-standing dominance may be dwindling, many are urging caution regarding this theory. Early last week, the Daily Beast reflected on the group’s genesis and outreach techniques. “The group gained notoriety worldwide for cultivating its brutal propaganda online. But because it denied the people living in its self-proclaimed caliphate access to the internet, disseminating videos of beheadings or mass shootings had to be done the old way in Mosul,” Florian Neuhof wrote. No matter the medium, one thing is clear: ISIS will spread its propaganda to as many people as it can, attempting to radicalize any impressionable individual.

Facebook’s next head of communications will have their work cut out for them. After Elliot Schrage announced his departure from the company in June, Recode reported this week that Mr. Zuckerberg was looking to the outside to find his replacement. It’s been a tumultuous year for Facebook: from the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal, to the proliferation of hate speech on its platform in Myanmar, to the security breach of 50 million users’ personal information. And it won’t get any easier – officials in Europe and the U.S. are “threatening to dismantle laws” that have allowed websites like Facebook to brush off responsibility for the content on their platforms, including hate speech, hoaxes and terror content.

While Facebook often takes the brunt of criticism for their lackadaisical content moderation policies, as Data & Society’s Becca Lewis recently wrote in an op-ed for NBC News, YouTube also plays a role in online extremism. For example, when viewing videos on the website, many young adults are exposed to a slew of influential YouTubers who build relationships with their audiences through live broadcasts, reacting to their views in real time and interacting with them via chat features. These accounts can garner thousands of dollars in one broadcast. And upon the conclusion of one video, YouTube’s recommendation algorithm serves up more radicalizing content on a silver platter.

Facebook’s problems recently compounded in a big way, to the tune of 50 million users. Last week, the social media company discovered that it had been exploited by outside hackers, exposing personal information for all of those affected. As The New York Times reported, this couldn’t have come “at a worse time” – Facebook is still reeling from the Cambridge Analytica scandal and its role in allowing online disinformation in countries like Myanmar leading to deaths.

With the interconnectivity that comes with the Internet and social media, extremists who would have otherwise never found each other are coming together like never before – and they’re finding strength in numbers. The New York Times reported last week on such an annual event in Germany, the eighth annual ‘ Eichsfeld Day,’ which was a grouping of the National Democratic Party, a political party “of avowed neo-Nazis better known as the NPD .” It brought “right-wing enthusiasts” who “preach anti-immigrant, pro-white gospel.”

It’s understood that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) sorts through terrorism threats daily, but these threats are changing – and multiplying. FBI Director Christopher Wray told CBS News in an interview last week that the bureau made “about 120” terror-related arrests last year alone. He explained that the number of homegrown violent extremists alone led to 1,000 of about 5,000 total terrorism investigations. The implications of those numbers are bleak, as cyber threats both new and emerging were “at an all-time high.”