The Social Media Extremism Pandemic
Author(s): Mohamed Hineidi — Director at EMAN
There is plenty of literature available today behind the causes of online radicalism, and the descent of an individual down the path of becoming radicalised online through social media. Although EMAN will not seek to provide further evidence of online radicalisation through social media – a subject that is well-known to counter-terrorism experts, intelligence agencies, CVE/PVE academics, the media and governments; we will, however, attempt to highlight why online radicalisation will become endemic moving forward.
Owning a smartphone has now become a necessity, not a luxury. The vast majority of people around the world own smartphones, regardless of geography, income level and social status. Today, a multi-billionaire and a low-income blue-collar worker may even own the same model of the same handset. In June 2021, research from Strategy Analytics showed that half the world’s entire population owned a smartphone, with the global user base rising from 1 billion in 2012 to approximately 4 billion today. It is further expected that by 2030, 5 billion people across the world will own a smartphone – with constant access to the internet and social media.
All smartphones share one common denominator – the ability for their users to access the internet and download major social media platforms. Social media platforms have been key for the dissemination of hate speech and radical narratives by extremist individuals and organisations across the world, regardless of whether those entities are unarmed organisations, political parties or armed transnational terrorist groups. In total, the current number of users of Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp, Telegram, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube alone is just over 10 billion, with these platforms often making headlines for not doing enough to tackle hate speech and radical content on their platforms. In addition to the aforementioned platforms, new social media platforms such as Gab, MeWe, Rumble and the encrypted Clubhouse platform are also being penetrated by radical individuals and organisations to disseminate their ideologies and source new recruits to their causes, with MeWe – having branded itself as an alternative to Facebook without targeted ads – becoming the fifth most popular free app on the Apple store in January 2021.
Today, Islamist radicals, far-right extremists, White supremacists and Hindutva extremists have proven adept at swaying the minds of people through social media across countries that constitute most of the world’s population. These include Muslim-majority countries, white and Christian dominated countries (in this case, the term Western world cannot be used due to the reach of White supremacists and far-right extremists in non-Western countries such as Ukraine, Russia and parts of Latin America), and in the case of Hindutva extremists, across India – the second most populous country in the world. These extremists, of different ideologies and religions, have proven their abilities to gain followers, recruit vulnerable youth, raise money and procure weaponry. Their followers have also launched attacks through carefully curated social media posts on Facebook and Twitter, compelling “forwards” on messaging apps such Messenger, WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram, and emotionally manipulative videos on YouTube and TikTok. These are not revelations, but access to social media and mobile phones amongst youth is directly proportionate to the number of young, radicalised individuals. An internal Facebook report in 2016 found that approximately 65 per cent of people who joined an extremist group on Facebook did so because the platform’s algorithm suggested it, and these algorithms are in use across all content-based social media platforms.
As mobile phone and internet access becomes more widespread, so too does disinformation and hate speech. Whether it is misinformation and hateful rhetoric related to Jihadist messaging, far-right propaganda or even COVID-19, social media will continue being the primary weapon used by extremists to broadcast their messages, recruit individuals and organise attacks. Levelling social media companies with hefty fines, therefore, has proven to be unconstructive. It is virtually impossible for these companies to ban all radical accounts or remove all hateful content. But there is, however, cause for optimism. Organisations such as Moonshot – a social enterprise that uses a tool dubbed the “Redirect Method” to redirect users searching for extremist content towards constructive alternative messages – is currently working with social media companies to help deradicalise people that are scouring for hateful rhetoric. As social media users’ number in their billions, coupled with the overwhelming amounts of posts that contain hateful rhetoric, big data solutions are required to assist social media platforms to take down posts, block accounts and ban users who are engaging in the dissemination of extremist content, regardless of language, religion or ideology.
