How extremists and terror groups hijacked social media
- Published
鈥淓veryone get out of @selfridges now gun shots!! I鈥檓 inside.鈥
Olly Murs is tweeting from Selfridges department store in London. Piles of chinos and artfully distressed cardigans are hurriedly discarded as men and women run screaming, fearful of a Westgate-style mall attack.
鈥淩eally not sure what鈥檚 happened! I鈥檓 in the back office... but people screaming and running towards exits!鈥
Murs continues tweeting from the safety of an office as the store empties.
鈥淓vacuating store now!!! **** heart is pounding.鈥
Later, he checks his phone for replies. There is one that catches his eye: Piers Morgan.
鈥淪top tweeting mate. Nothing happened.鈥
There was no terror attack in Oxford Street on Black Friday (24 November) 2017. That's because there was no attacker. A few hours later, when Oxford Street was no longer in lockdown, police would describe an 鈥榓ltercation鈥 on the tube. This relatively minor incident had set in motion an enormous chain of events 鈥 a well-oiled that amplified the hysteria on the ground.
It was the latest evolution of the relationship between social media and terrorism: a terror attack without any terrorism.
It鈥檚 this relationship that the veteran war reporter David Patrikarakos explores in his new book, War In 140 Characters.
鈥淪ocial media platforms are geared towards outrage and they鈥檙e geared towards hysteria,鈥 he says to 成人快手 Three. 鈥淚f someone tweets something then that has the capacity to go viral and cause panic in a way it previously couldn鈥檛.鈥
The monochrome flag co-opted by groups including so-called Islamic State
We are supposed to be much savvier about social media than we used to be. We can spot fake news, and we are wise to and Russian bots.
鈥淧eople are getting more savvy,鈥 agrees David. 鈥淏ut things are going to get worse before they get better.鈥
David's pessimism is partly inspired by the story arc of the so-called Islamic State 鈥 a terror group he emphatically believes "could not have existed" without the platform of social media.
In War In 140 Characters, he gives an example of how IS鈥檚 social media presence helped them on the battlefield, during the now-notorious Fall of Mosul in 2014.
He explains the Iraqi army were bigger and far better equipped 鈥 but they fled the city when they saw IS鈥檚 brutality plastered all over social media 鈥 in the form of severed heads and execution videos.
The group also promoted life under the nascent Islamic State group, posting footage of the group鈥檚 members cut like music videos. - perhaps because, as former US Assistant Attorney General John P Carlin put it, 鈥渒ittens sell鈥.
In this way, it recruited men, women and even children from all over the world 鈥 including the Bethnal Green Academy girls 鈥 through Facebook and Twitter.
IS quickly realised, however, that its most violent material was most effective at spreading terror and building a rogue state. This arguably began with the execution of journalist James Foley in 2014.
The execution was a grotesque PR stunt, deliberately staged for maximum virality, from the rehearsed lines of the masked executioner, 鈥楯ihadi John鈥, to the victim鈥檚 orange jumpsuit. It was shared widely on Twitter and made front-page news all over the world.
David believes that the publicity generated by the incident spurred IS to commit escalating violence.
鈥淚slamic State is in, or was in, the news-making business. So they started coming up with increasingly horrific ways [of committing murder]. They go from beheading, to immolating, to submerging in water.鈥
At one point, these videos were unavoidable on Twitter. As a result, 鈥淭here is a great inuring,鈥 says David. People become accustomed to violence, and it no longer has the same effect on them. A recent upload of the execution of Syrian pilot Azzam Eid by an IS propaganda outlet was not covered by most media outlets, for example. Neither were IS鈥檚 crude and badly photoshopped Christmas 鈥榩ostcards鈥, calling for supporters to strike London and behead Santa.
Islamic State is losing ground online and off, but Black Friday showed that our knee-jerk response to the merest hint of an 鈥榠ncident鈥 can still provoke panic and terror.
One of social media鈥檚 strengths is that it can unify people around the world through shared ideals. But this includes those with extremist views.
For a while, Twitter promoted itself as , and in time it became a rallying point for extremists. This all too frequently led to anonymous, bigoted online attacks on others.
This became a big enough issue during the general election campaign that into abuse aimed at politicians. MPs of all parties shared their stories of online attacks in a parliamentary debate.
Social media also gave those on the far left and far right a place to co-ordinate IRL activity. This summer鈥檚 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, was organised using a .
In the UK, English Defence League (EDL) protests are frequently met with Anti鈥揊ascist Network (AFN) counter鈥損rotestors 鈥 in violent clashes and arrests on both sides.
Both groups organise via regional Facebook groups. The AFN encourages groups of friends to set up their own anti-fascist groups, and specifically suggests Facebook and Twitter as powerful ways of doing so. However, its website adds that Facebook profiles have to be 鈥渢ightly controlled due to security reasons鈥 and that Twitter users should not "divulge too much information online" - a nod to the risks of posting personal information.
The threat of online abuse is, for some, always there. Back in 2015, one outcry over abuse on social media became too big for Twitter to ignore. People were appalled at the racist harassment received by actor Leslie Jones after she took on a lead role in the Ghostbusters reboot. Twitter changed its rules to actively and what it describes as 鈥渉ateful conduct鈥.
Some of its new policies are yet to come into force 鈥 a rule banning hateful imagery and display names doesn鈥檛 come into force until 18 December 2017 鈥 but the company insists it is doing more than ever before to actively wipe out extremist propaganda.
However, beyond Twitter and Facebook there remains a factory of working away on websites like Reddit and 4Chan. They trade in offensive propaganda that sometimes aims to push the boundaries without overtly crossing them.
In October 2017, regulars on 4chan printed and distributed posters in several states across America that carried the simple message: 鈥淚t鈥檚 OK to be white.鈥 The posters generated plenty of publicity.
David thinks social media companies can鈥檛 (and perhaps won鈥檛) deal with this on their own.
鈥淪elf policing doesn鈥檛 work. It hasn鈥檛 worked,鈥 he says. 鈥淪ocial media companies have to be regulated. There is too much stuff out there that shouldn鈥檛 be.鈥
It is surprising to hear a journalist calling for censorship of any kind. But freedom of speech should not be at the expense of freedom from abuse, he says.
鈥淭here鈥檚 a difference between free speech - which is legal - and hate speech, which is incitement to violence, and is illegal," he says. "You go across social media sites and hate speech is everywhere. I mean, really 鈥 it鈥檚 everywhere.鈥
The uncomfortable role of social media in bringing extremist groups and terror threats to prominence, grooming recruits, and disseminating terror, is clearer than ever.
Scrolling through Twitter on Black Friday triggered a terror response 鈥 proving how conditioned we are to such threats. And so long as the triggers continue to circulate, our fingers will continue to twitch.