Incitement to Terrorism

The crackdown on terrorism has emerged as the cutting-edge for issues arising from the global reach of Internet platforms, large and small.

National governments have laws and law-enforcement bodies. But terrorism is quite often global – with operations in one country being planned to disrupt life in another. The Internet provides a convenient network for terrorists to share content, recruit and even communicate across borders – unless they are prevented from doing so. The result is an evident need to cooperate globally.

Since 2015, the European Union has pursued a largely voluntary approach. It set up the EU Internet Forum, a yearly gathering where platforms and anti-terrorism organisations – led by the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol) – exchange information and coordinate action in the fight against terrorism. Under this umbrella, the platforms themselves have jointly created a "database of hashes," which today holds more than 200,000 pieces of content – all of it banned. This allows content, once removed, to stay offline. And it helps prevent the spread of content removed on one platform from proliferation on another.

But is it yet enough? At the request of European governments, the European Commission has proposed a new regulation on preventing the dissemination of terrorist content online (2018). This 39-page proposal would create a single unified law in all 27 European Union member states, if approved. The law would codify a procedure for notifying terrorist content across border – and impose a one-hour takedown requirement for content notified by judicial order.

Additional content on the fight against incitement to terrorism is available on the World Intermediary Liability Map (WILMap), led by the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School.

Records 1 - 10 of 13


chart preview

Change in social app downloads in United States in January 2021

The chart shows the per cent of change in the downloads of social apps in United States, from 05 to 10 January 2021. The article presents a short analysis of motives, trends and possible effects of policy changes of major social network platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Whatsapp.
chart preview

Cumulative Suspension Rate for Accounts Eventually Suspended

The graph shows the cumulative suspension rate for all accounts identified as being Islamic State or Jihadi by the number of days the accounts survived before being suspended (on the horizontal axis). The data shows that Islamic State accounts have had higher suspension rates compared to other Jihadi accounts. The chart focuses on accounts that were independently judged to have breached Twitter’s terms of service.
chart preview

Cumulative Suspension Rate For All Accounts in Database

The graph shows the cumulative suspension rate for all accounts identified as being Islamic State or Jihadi by the number of days the accounts survived before being suspended. The data shows that Islamic State accounts have had higher suspension rates compared to other Jihadi accounts.
chart preview

Duration of Account Activity of English-Language Pro-Islamic State Accounts on Twitter, 2016-2017

The chart shows the distribution of the duration of Twitter accounts of English-language of Islamic State sympathizers. The report collected and reviewed 845646 tweets produced by 1782 English-language pro-Islamic State accounts from 15 February 2016 to 01 May 2017. In the context of the study, a user’s "duration of activity" is quantified by the number of days between an account’s first and last tweet.
chart preview

Failed, Foiled or Completed Attacks by Affiliation (2017)

In 2017, the attacks specifically classified as ethno-nationalist and separatist accounted for the largest proportion of failed, foiled and completed terrorist attacks.
chart preview

ISIS Accounts Spread More Content Before Getting Suspended by Twitter Compared With Other Eventually Suspended Accounts

This graph shows the percentage of suspended users who were able to tweet 10, 100, 1,000, or more times before being suspended. Based on data collected from Twitter, this chart shows that ISIS accounts seem to successfully tweet more posts before being suspended, compared to the entire population of suspended accounts.
chart preview

Median Number of Followers, After Accounts’ Suspension of English-Language pro-Islamic State Sympathizers, 2016-2017

The chart shows the median number of followers of Twitter accounts of English-language of Islamic State sympathizers, after accounts' suspension by the platform. The results of study shows that the account’s suspension impacts the efforts to rebuild a robust followership for the English-language pro-Islamic State sympatizers after suspension.
chart preview

Number of Failed, Foiled or Completed Attacks

The total number of attacks (129) decreased after a sharp spike in 2017 (205), primarily because of the decrease in reported separatist-related incidents.
chart preview

Number of Posts on Telegram, 30 Days Before and 30 Days After Europol's Interventions, 2018-2020

The chart shows the evolution of the number of organic and forwarded posts on Telegram platform, after the two interventions of Europol in October 2018 and November 2019. The results of study shows that the 2019 intervention had a profound impact on the number of posts on Telegram compared to the 2018 intervention. While the 2018 intervention showed only 15% decline in organic posts and 9.7% decline in forwarded ones, the 2019 one resulted in 95.5% decline in organic posts and 95% decline in forwarded ones.
chart preview

Number of Posts on Telegram, Six Months Before and Six Months After Europol's Interventions, 2018-2020

The chart shows the evolution of the number of organic and forwarded posts on Telegram platform, after the two interventions of Europol in October 2018 and November 2019. The results of study shows that the 2019 intervention had a profound impact on the number of posts on Telegram and this impact was not short-term or temporary.