Fact:
On April 3, 2017, the day Vladimir Putin was due to visit the city, a suicide bombing was carried out in the St. Petersburg metro, killing 15 people and injuring 64. An al-Qaeda affiliate, Imam Shamil Battalion, claimed responsibility.
Facebook is connecting more than just distant relatives who post too much about their children, at least per a recent study that concludes it is connecting new affiliates to the Islamic State’s digital networks. According to the Telegraph, researchers with the Counter Extremism Project analyzed the social media habits of roughly 1,000 ISIS supporters in 96 countries, finding that ‘users with radical Islamist sympathies were routinely introduced to one another through the popular ‘suggested friends’ feature.’ The findings of the report won’t be published in full until later this month, the paper added, though researchers Gregory Waters and Robert Postings both said that interacting with or merely researching extremists on the website resulted in Facebook recommending ever-growing numbers of them as suggested friends. ‘Facebook, in their desire to connect as many people as possible have inadvertently created a system which helps connect extremists and terrorists,’ Postings told the Telegraph.
Extremists: Their Words. Their Actions.
Fact:
On April 3, 2017, the day Vladimir Putin was due to visit the city, a suicide bombing was carried out in the St. Petersburg metro, killing 15 people and injuring 64. An al-Qaeda affiliate, Imam Shamil Battalion, claimed responsibility.
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