A "surge" in jihadist propaganda from the Islamic State group (ISIS) is finding its way online, pressuring social media sites and internet providers to devise ways to deal with the extremist content.
Two days after his death, a video emerged Sunday of one of the Paris gunmen, Amedy Coulibaly, pledging allegiance to ISIS, and describing how he coordinated his violence with Said and Chérif Kouachi, the two men accused of killing 12 at the offices of French magazine Charlie Hebdo, in order to "have more of an impact."
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Though removed from YouTube, a copy stubbornly remained on Vid.me, a video sharing site.
"We’re taking down ISIS propaganda content as quickly as possible," Vid.me’s co-founder, Warren Shaeffer,
told Defense One.
"Across the board there has been a surge in ISIS related content getting posted, and we’re not unique in trying to figure out the best way to deal with it."
Shaeffer says he's not alone.
"Every company is struggling to figure out how to balance free speech with promoting extremist content and propaganda, and it is not easy," he tells Defense One.
Twitter and Facebook have dedicated teams to deal with extremist-related posts, Defense One reports. Vid.me has six. And though Twitter has blocked thousands of user accounts suspected to have links with ISIS, Defense One reports, new ones pop up almost immediately.
Twitter is just "the tip of the iceberg," Geopolitical Monitor, a Canadian consultant firm, tells Defense One, noting loosely monitored online internet forums are the biggest source of jihadist propaganda, and the main center of recruitment.
After the horrific shootings in Paris at Charlie Hebdo and a Kosher grocer last week, justice ministers across the European Union have called on major Internet providers to create a system to quickly report and remove online material that "aims to incite hatred and terror."
PC World reports.
In
a joint statement Sunday, the ministers called such a system "essential."
"We are concerned at the increasingly frequent use of the Internet to fuel hatred and violence and signal our determination to ensure that the Internet is not abused to this end," they said.
Pressure on the tech companies from intelligence services also is mounting, PC World reports.
But calls for more powers of surveillance for the police and the intelligence services in the wake of a terrorist attack may be misguided, according to privacy advocate Paul Bernal, PC World reports.
"The fundamental problem is that terrorism, by its very nature, is hard to deal with. That’s something we have to face up to — and not try to look for silver bullets. No amount of technology, no level of surveillance, will solve that fundamental problem. We shouldn’t pretend that it can."