James Foley’s recent execution has led to discussion
of the way radicals have stepped up use of social media, especially Twitter,
said to be one of the most permissive platforms, as in this story by Dave Lee
in the BBC news, link. Facebook and YouTube seem to be less
affected, as these companies are set up to remove content like this more
easily.
The article reports the name change (of ISIS) for social media
(to IS), and the development of a phone app that, when a users invokes it,
would propagate carefully worded IS propaganda to followers, in a way to evade
Twitter spam filters. It is difficult for Twitter to block or remove this
material. (A technical trick like this is proposed in the film “Goodbye World”,
reviewed on the movies blog Aug. 21.) Other users tried to come up with hashtag-backed
schemes to replace IS content with other content supportive of Foley.
Generally, in the West, content of this nature is
seen as so brazen and unacceptable (and primitive) that no one will bother to
try to decipher its ideological message.
By the way, a couple weeks ago the Twitter website on my iPhone went haywire, randomly deleting followers and "followings" when I browsed the lists. I restored them manually on a regular PC. I now wonder if this problem could have anything to do with their app, maybe malware associated with it.
Update: Aug. 28
ABC News reports on how difficult it is for Twitter to keep ISIS or similar groups from abusing the service, as there is no central control.
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