And while persistent campaigns against ISIS online did not remove the horror entirely, it did significant damage to its ability to recruit, terrify, and proliferate its ideology.
"In 2013 and 2014, ISIS content was just out in the open", said Amarnath Amarasingam , associate fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation.
He noted a Europol campaign in November 2019 against ISIS extremists on Telegram -- an encrypted messaging app that many far-right extremists in the US are reported to be moving to now.
It doesn't, for example, have something like the black flag that was ubiquitous among ISIS supporters, or images of masked militants in fatigues.
Conway noted that far-right content also seemed profitable, drawing, according to her research, greater numbers of followers (and so eyeballs for advertisers) than ISIS content -- on average about six times as many, when comparing followers of ISIS to far-right Twitter accounts.
Persons:
President Trump, Trump, Amarnath Amarasingam, Amarasingam, Gab, Maura Conway, Conway, Patrick Crusius, El, Trump's
Organizations:
Twitter, Social, ISIS, Trump, International Centre, Dublin City University, Fox News
Locations:
United States, Parler, fatigues, El Paso, Texas