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In the final two years, Facebook’s transparency studies have proven that the corporate is detecting and deleting 99 per cent of terrorism-related posts.
- IANS
- Last Updated: July 14, 2020, 11:11 AM IST
Despite Facebook’s efforts to make the platform freed from terrorist propaganda, pro-Islamic State (ISIS) accounts have discovered methods to outlive on the platform, says a brand new report from non-profit Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) launched on Monday. In the final two years, Facebook’s transparency studies have proven that the corporate is detecting and deleting 99 per cent of terrorism-related posts earlier than they had been reported to the social community.
But this doesn’t imply that the platform is totally freed from terrorist propaganda. The new ISD report, titled The Propaganda Pipeline: The ISIS Fuouaris Upload Network on Facebook” is based on an investigation that delved into the inner workings of a pro-ISIS account network on Facebook. The researchers examined the behaviours of a network of pro-ISIS Facebook accounts which branded itself the “Fuouaris Upload”, a term used for referring to medieval Islamic warriors. The investigation that included ethnographic monitoring lasted from April 7 to July 30.
This monitoring revealed 288 pro-ISIS accounts. Many of the accounts had followings in the thousands, according to the ISD report. About a third accounts were controlled by one user named Luqmen Ben Tachafin, which comprised the core of the network. The investigation revealed that by May 21, the network had shared 50 pieces of video content and had collectively garnered more than 34,000 views. During the three months of analysis, ISD researchers found that the Fuouaris Upload network expanded to other platforms, namely SoundCloud, where it currently controls 18 branded accounts that have seeded 91 pieces of ISIS audio content.
“While 70 % of the Fuouaris Upload accounts had been taken down throughout the monitoring interval, these decentralised networks demonstrated appreciable resilience,” said the report. While 62 of the core accounts were removed, 28 identical accounts remained, highlighting the uneven nature of moderation, it added.
“As particular person accounts had been taken down, ISIS customers mocked Facebook moderators for not understanding the size of their presence throughout the platform,” said the report. The researchers identified several tactics that allow these accounts to survive, sidestep, and continue to seed ISIS content across the platform. These tactics deployed by pro-ISIS accounts included hijacking accounts from other users and content masking.
According to a report in BBC, Facebook said it had “no tolerance for terrorist propaganda”. “We had already eliminated greater than 250 accounts referenced in ISD’s report and are reviewing the remaining 30 accounts towards our insurance policies,” a Facebook spokesperson was quoted as saying to ISD. “We haven’t any tolerance for terrorist propaganda on our platform, and take away content material and accounts that violate our coverage as quickly as we determine them.”
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