The year 2019 has been a bad one for the Islamic State (IS). After losing the self-declared terrestrial Caliphate in March, and its leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi in October, IS suffered another loss of ground in late November – on social media.The Europol, European Union’s law enforcement unit, in coordination with nine social media companies such as Telegram, Twitter, Google, Instagram and Facebook, cracked down on IS’s online distribution network. Following these crackdowns, the IS-linked media disseminator, Nashir News Agency, and its mirror channels stopped distributing IS content online.To date, this is the most comprehensive crackdown against IS since it revolutionised the use of social media platforms for propaganda dissemination, online recruitment and radicalisation. The largest purge was carried out by Telegram, the favoured instant messaging and broadcasting application for IS operatives and supporters, which took down more than 43,000 bots and channels in one day.The IS efforts to re-establish or re-create its accounts and channels have been equally unsuccessful. Telegram carried out two similar albeit less intensive clampdowns against the IS’s online network in April and December 2018 as well. The April crackdown was a joint Europol-Telegram operation, while December purge was Telegram’s own undertaking.Clearly, IS was caught off-guard as it was not expecting such a large-scale crackdown. The group did not have a backup plan as well. Hence, it is not surprising that IS is struggling to adapt to the rapidly evolving social media environment.In the aftermath of Christchurch Mosque mass-shooting in New Zealand and the IS church bombings in Sri Lanka, the Western governments increased their pressure on social media companies to remove the extremist content and accounts from their platforms. Subsequently, various social media companies hired more than 18,000 data interpreters, linguists and terrorism experts to identify, analyse and remove extremist content as well as accounts and channels affiliated with violent extremist organisations.Also read: The World Has a Long Battle Ahead With the Idea of ISISIS’s official reaction to the social media purges came on November 24 in its weekly Arabic magazine Al-Naba. The magazine’s editorial noted, “It is only a matter of time until IS media activists find alternative platforms. The IS media apparatus, like Jihad itself, will remain until the day of judgement.”More broadly, two types of reactions have come from IS’ online operatives and supporters on the Europol-Telegram clamp down. Some of them have advocated resilience and perseverance to maintain their presence in Telegram. They have upheld that Khilafat (Caliphate) cannot be deleted and IS message will continue to spread. However, the overwhelming majority of IS’ online community has suggested migration to (alternative) decentralised platforms.IS is struggling to find viable alternative social media platforms. Telegram offered IS a centralised venue to network, recruit and disseminate extremist content. Features like media sharing, individual chats, reposting from other channels and users harmonised various IS sub-groups under one banner. Though, IS central media remains strong – producing reports, videos and infographics – its visibility has been significantly low.As of now, IS’s online operatives and supporters are running from one social media platform to another to resuscitate their presence and assess what works for them. Experts believe that it will take IS supporters and operatives several months to establish their networks on new platforms. The majority of IS supporters have migrated from Telegram to other social media platforms such as TamTam, Rocket Chat, Hoop Messenger, Threema, Conversation and Riot. Some of these platforms enable the users to make accounts without entering their identity, so it is difficult to trace them. This is why, among other reasons, IS is exploring them as alternative platforms. However, IS has faced an immediate pushback from these social media platforms as well.Publicity is lifeblood of all terrorist groups. Through violent attacks, terrorist movements draw attention to their ideological causes and attract disaffected youth. The information warfare battled through the ideas and narratives is more important for such groups than the physical battle. So, the disruption of IS online propaganda network is undoubtedly unprecedented and a major breakthrough.Though the long-term consequences of Europol’s recent crackdown will only become clearer with time, three immediate impacts are quite obvious. First, IS will create backup plans to preempt future clampdowns. Second, IS might create its own servers and messaging apps to avoid future disruptions of its online media operations. Third, the group might move to the more secretive dark web where its detection and disruption might become more difficult. Following the purge, IS warned Telegram that its crackdown would backfire driving the jihadists underground where authorities would not be able to see what they were doing.Also read: Interview: ‘Turkey Is Reviving Islamic State in Rojava’In 2015-2016, when IS operatives and sympathisers were pushed away from open-ended social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, they moved encrypted platforms such as Telegram and WhatsApp. Now, if IS relocates to the dark web, somehow, it will recreate its networks, but it will be next to impossible for authorities to trace them.The battle against will have to be won online and offline. The ongoing hide-and-seek between IS and social media companies will continue in the absence of a robust counter-ideological narrative against the terror group’s espoused Caliphate discourse. Similar to pervious crackdowns against IS’s online network, recent measures are temporary and they are unlikely to have a lasting impact unless coordinated approaches between the governments and social media companies are not sustained.Abdul Basit is a Research Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He tweets at @basitresearcher.
