TCAP Insights: Understanding Patterns of Terrorist Exploitation Online by Geographic Region
We present here an analysis of terrorist exploitation of tech platforms by their location. ‘TCAP Insights’ is a series of research and policy analysis into patterns of terrorist use of the internet that harnesses the analytical power of the TCAP’s dataset
Key insights:
Over 70% of terrorist content identified and submitted to the TCAP was hosted on tech platforms based in either Europe or North America. A considerably higher volume of terrorist content was found on Europe-based platforms, however our engagement with North America-based companies through TCAP alerts was higher than for Europe-based platforms.
As part of the Tech Against Terrorism Europe (TATE) project, Tech Against Terrorism will be providing tailored support to Europe-based platforms, including through TCAP alerts, to support them in tackling terrorist content that is illegal under the European Union’s terrorist content online (TCO) regulation.
North America-based platforms averaged the lowest removal rate (82%) of terrorist content out of all geographic regions.
Executive summary:
This analysis is based on data relating to terrorist content online collected by the Terrorist Content Analytics Platform (TCAP) between 25 November 2020 and 19 January 2023. This data set includes 39,964 URLs of terrorist content submitted to the TCAP (TCAP Submissions), including 22,615 of those sent as alerts to 95 different tech companies (TCAP Alerts). This is official terrorist content produced by the 37 different terrorist entities alerted by the TCAP, as defined by our Inclusion Policy.
The overwhelming majority of platforms on which we found terrorist content are based in Europe or North America, with a similar number in each region (46 and 43, respectively).
We found the highest volume of terrorist content on Europe-based platforms (18,237 submissions/ 50%), more than double that on North America-based platforms (8,268 submissions/ 23%).
We sent a higher proportion of alerts (in relation to submissions) to North America-based platforms (79%) than Europe-based platforms (51%), meaning our engagement with North America-based companies is much higher than for Europe-based platforms. This exposes a clear gap in which Europe-based platforms are being heavily exploited by terrorist actors for propaganda dissemination, but could benefit from receiving more targeted and increased support from the TCAP. As part of the Tech Against Terrorism Europe (TATE) project, Tech Against Terrorism will be providing tailored support to Europe-based platforms, including through TCAP alerts, to support them in tackling terrorist content that is illegal under the European Union’s terrorist content online (TCO) regulation.
On average, platforms based in the Middle East were exploited most heavily, with the highest number of TCAP submissions and alerts per platform.
When comparing Europe and North America-based platforms, to whom the majority of TCAP alerts were sent, North America-based platforms averaged a lower removal rate (82% compared to 86% of alerted URLs offline).
This blog analyses TCAP data in relation to the geographic location of tech platforms, including the quantity of platforms per country and region, the volume of terrorist content per region, and the removal rate of terrorist content. The geographic location in which a tech company is legally based determines the jurisdiction it operates in, and therefore the laws it must follow. Given the burgeoning online regulation around the world governing tech platforms’ responsibilities in tackling harmful content (including terrorist content), it is useful to understand terrorist exploitation and associated tech platform liability by region.
Analysis: Quantifying tech platforms by geographic distribution
Though we found that terrorists exploit tech companies located across the globe, the overwhelming majority of platforms on which we found terrorist content are located in Europe or North America, with a similar number in each region (46 and 43 respectively). The heavy concentration of platforms in these two regions reflects a broader trend in terms of western domination of the global tech sector. We found terrorist content within scope of the TCAP to be based most commonly on platforms in the United States (43 platforms), which is perhaps unsurprising given that Silicon Valley remains one of the largest technology hubs in the world. However, this pattern may also reflect a collection bias given the TCAP team primarily engages with tech platforms based in the west. The global diversity of the tech companies we work with is likely to increase as we seek to expand our outreach and as we include more localised terrorist groups within the TCAP who may exploit local platforms.
There is a significant percentage of platforms in our sample (20%) which do not have publicly available information on where the platform is based. Even if platforms do not publicly disclose where they are geographically based, they are still required to register to a location and are liable to that country’s online regulatory laws. The platforms without publicly available information tend to be small or micro platforms which slightly skews the data, as well as making it more difficult to reach out to these companies to offer support.
Analysis: Volume of terrorist content across geographic regions
We found the highest volume of terrorist content on Europe-based platforms (18,237 submissions). This is more than double that on North America-based platforms (8,268 submissions). We also sent a higher proportion of alerts (in relation to submissions) to North America-based platforms (79%) than Europe-based platforms (51%), meaning our engagement with North America-based companies is much higher than for Europe-based platforms. This exposes a clear gap in which Europe-based platforms are being heavily exploited by terrorist actors for propaganda dissemination, but could benefit from receiving more targeted and increased support from the TCAP. As part of the Tech Against Terrorism Europe (TATE) project, Tech Against Terrorism will be providing tailored support to European based platforms, including through TCAP alerts, to support them tackle terrorist content that is illegal under the European Union’s terrorist content online (TCO) regulation.
On average, platforms based in the Middle East were exploited most heavily, with the highest number of TCAP submissions and alerts per platform (see Figure 4 above). Whilst this was a small sample size comprising of 5 platforms based in the region, it demonstrates a heavy concentration of terrorist content on just a few platforms.
Analysis: Tech platform content removal rates by geographic region
The outstanding finding from analysing removal rates of TCAP-alerted terrorist content is the broadly high levels of that content that is now offline, 94% of alerts overall. There is a consistently high tech platform removal rate across all the regions in which terrorist content is hosted. It is worth noting that tech platforms based in the three regions with the highest average removal rates (Asia, Oceania and South America) received a negligible number of alerts (584 between them) in comparison to Europe and North America (15,878 alerts between them).
When comparing Europe and North America-based platforms, to which the majority of TCAP alerts were sent, North America-based platforms averaged a lower removal rate (82% compared to 86% of alerted URLs offline). This may be attributable to more libertarian attitudes towards freedom of speech in the United States, which has limited obligations for tech platforms to remove harmful content through online regulation. Interestingly, tech companies whose location was not publicly available did not, on average, remove terrorist content at a lower rate than where the location was available.