Terrorism and social media focus of Swansea conference

"Just because terrorism content isn't as visible... doesn't mean it's not there," says Prof Maura Conway

Social media is becoming too well policed for terrorists and they are looking elsewhere, experts have warned.

Security services, internet experts and non-governmental organisations are meeting in Swansea at a fourth biennial Terrorism and Social Media conference.

It will discuss the changing ways far right and Islamist extremists use the web to organise and promote messages.

They have been engaged in a "back to the future" battle since platforms took some action, one specialist has said.

As tech giants clamp down on suspicious content, extremists have resorted to instant messaging, mobile apps and old-fashioned websites.

Cyber terrorism expert Prof Maura Conway, from Dublin City and Swansea universities, said social media was now a "loss leader" for groups like Islamic State (IS).

"IS and the like still post on Facebook and Twitter etc, but they know that they'll quickly be removed, so they use a scattergun approach to entice the most number of people in the limited time their message will be seen," she said.

"The serious content is held on terrorist-operated websites, which contain a vast amount of archived material taken down from mainstream social media."

Prof Conway produced a recent report looking at two European far-right online networks and found the top 30 most accessed domains included 11 different types of service, from websites and video sharing to follower tracking and instant messaging.

"Just because terrorism content isn't as visible as it might have seemed a few years ago, it doesn't mean it's not there and we can forget about it," she said.

This is the fourth biennial conference

"Social media might be where the mainstream chat is, but while they'll post a few eye-catching sensationalist posts there, it's a three-card trick to draw attention away from more obscure platforms."

She likened it to the way in which sites like Facebook can detect that you're interested in buying a sofa.

"Terrorist groups will monitor the sort of things in which you are interested," she said.

"Whether that's Manchester United, Coronation Street, or al-Qaeda, data-miners will know, and in the wrong hands that information could be deadly."

Adam Hadley, founder of NGO Tech Against Terrorism, is in agreement. He is another keynote speaker at the Terrorism and Social Media (TASM) conference at Swansea University.

He said that on Facebook less than 0.05% of all social media content related to terrorism.

It has previously said it had "no tolerance for terrorist propaganda".

However, latest research suggested global terrorist and violent extremist actors were running at least 198 easily-accessed websites.

Meta, the owners of Facebook, is expected to attend the two-day conference

In-depth analysis of 33 prominent websites - run by actors such as Islamic State, al-Qaeda, Atomwaffen Division and the Taliban - confirmed 1.54 million monthly visitors, with the majority of visits coming from Algeria, Pakistan, the United States, and the United Kingdom.

"Even 0.05% still amounts to hundreds of thousands of hits and traffic, yet that's not what we should be most worried about," he said.

"The big tech firms have got so good at shutting this down at source that there is now comparatively little threat."

Mr Hadley argued that more resources needed to be put into monitoring "low-tech" terrorist-operated websites, blogs and message boards.

He went on to say that there were distinct differences between the ways in which different extremists use the web.

"Islamic extremists are much more organised, and their online message is intended for the world... whereas the far right is much more disparate, and relies on messaging to keep splintered groups in contact."

Mr Hadley said it made far-right extremists much harder to track online, as the boundaries between their opinions and the mainstream political discourse was not so immediately obvious.

Delegates from the Home Office, US State Department and the UN, as well as the tech industry, including Twitter, YouTube and Meta, owners of Facebook, are expected to attend the two-day TASM conference.

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