Chris Meserole and Daniel L. Byman
This publication is part of a series of papers released by the Global Research Network on Terrorism and Technology, of which the Brookings Institution is a member. The research conducted by this network seeks to better understand radicalisation, recruitment and the myriad of ways terrorist entities use the digital space.
Terrorist groups pose a profound challenge for technology companies. The ‘blitzscaling’ model pioneered by YouTube, Instagram and others has enabled social networks and file-sharing services to gain tens and even hundreds of millions of users globally before they make meaningful revenue, much less profits.[1] By the time technology companies can afford to hire a counterterrorism expert, it is often too late: any application with tens of millions of users worldwide but little oversight is ripe for terrorist exploitation. Worse, even when companies are able to hire counterterrorism experts, they are often unable to do so at a scale commensurate with the problem.[2]
For the vast majority of technology companies, developing an in-house competence in counterterrorism is thus not a viable strategy for moderating potential terrorist accounts. Instead, most companies must choose between one of two imperfect strategies. The first is to adjudicate possible terrorist accounts on an ad hoc basis. The downside to this approach, as CloudFlare CEO Matthew Prince made clear when he ‘woke up one morning and decided’ to take the Daily Stormer, a popular online forum for white nationalists, offline after the Charlottesville attack, is that it is arbitrary.[3]By contrast, another strategy is to rely on third-party terrorist definitions and designation lists. Although this approach offers a more principled means of account moderation, it is not without its own drawbacks. Most notably, off-the-shelf definitions and designation lists all contain biases and limitations that may not be obvious to non-experts and that could unwittingly bias a company’s efforts at platform governance. Just as companies lack the competence to identify terrorist actors, they also lack the expertise to discriminate between various definitions and lists – often with significant consequences.
Relying on third party definitions and lists is preferable to ad hoc adjudication, but companies that adjudicate terrorist accounts based on such lists should understand how to evaluate them. The aim of this policy paper is to provide such an understanding.
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