CEP Study On YouTube’s Failure To Remove Extremist Content Featured In The Washington Post

"In Fight Against ISIS’s Propaganda Machine, Raids And Online Trench Warfare"

Joby Warrick
August 19, 2018
The Washington Post

The campaign started with the cyber equivalent of a massive airstrike: law-enforcement agencies from eight countries, moving in unison to smash two of the main propaganda organs of the Islamic State.

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European counterterrorism officials say the privately owned Telegram app recently improved its efforts to remove extremist content, but independent analysts say the messaging service still hosts hundreds of chat rooms used daily by Islamic State members and supporters. Within weeks of the Europol operation, more Amaq videos started turning up on Telegram, and then were reposted on other social media platforms, including YouTube and Facebook.

On those heavily policed sites, extremist material is often taken down within minutes, but in some cases the links remained active for much longer, Gluck said. A study released last month by the Counter Extremism Project, a New York-based nonprofit, found that a quarter of Islamic State videos uploaded onto YouTube remained accessible for at least two hours before being discovered and taken down, according to the study, which analyzed content over three months last spring. On other platforms, the links remained active for days or even weeks, potentially allowing new videos to be downloaded and shared thousands of times.

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In recent months, web channels used by the Islamic State have posted job openings for a variety of Internet specialists and technicians, stipulating that the applicants should be able to work from their homes, in secret, for little or no money. One posting on Aug. 7 asked for a volunteer video editor to help prepare clips of an English-speaking Palestinian cleric for dissemination on Telegram.

“It is an opportunity for easy ajr [divine reward],” the ad read, according to a transcript provided by the Middle East Media Research Institute. “All we may need to do is post around one video a day in Telegram and YouTube, so, if anybody wants to volunteer please [send a] private message.”

A scattered workforce of volunteers has allowed the Islamic State’s propaganda machine to survive the loss of the physical caliphate, analysts say.

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