The Taliban Armed Twitter: UofR Investigative Report | Globalnews.ca

According to a new research by the University of Regina, the Taliban deployed Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube and, above all, Twitter in the short time it took them to retake Afghanistan.

They issued hundreds of premature victory declarations via Twitter to amplify their messages and create a sense of inevitability. Their smartphones were as useful as their rifles when they stormed Kabul on August 15, research suggests.

Lead author Dr. Brian McQuinn said that the use of social media as a tool for political gain is a fairly international phenomenon.

“I think we’ve all experienced it here in Canada through the pandemic and through a series of events like the trucker convoy to Ottawa. How social media has really transformed how small groups of people can leverage their communities and funding and their ability to have a real impact on the larger kind of body politic.”

McQuinn said that Twitter was used as a gateway to link all other social networks because moderation on Twitter was basically non-existent.

“Of the 126,000 accounts that had any engagement with Taliban content, only 49 were moderated or restricted in any way. That meant they could basically open up to operate in the open and operate freely.”

He added that the majority of social media companies’ moderation efforts are focused on North America, “87% of the money Facebook spends on moderation is spent in North America alone, and they only represent 7% of the base.” of Facebook users, Mac Quinn said. “That means most groups working in other parts of the world have almost no moderation, unless it’s very obvious, unless it goes viral. These companies simply don’t have the resources or have chosen not to have the resources to really track this on a scale that would have a significant impact.”

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They report studies of 63 accounts claimed by Taliban leaders, spokespersons, and declared members from April 1 to September 16, 2021. These accounts had more than 2 million Twitter followers as of September 2021. As of May 8, 2022 , Taliban content reaches more than 3.3 million accounts.

According to the report, the Taliban tweeted more than 100,000 times between April and mid-September 2021. A supporting social media ecosystem of at least 126,000 Twitter accounts then amplified these messages, retweeting content written by the Taliban nearly a year. million times.

The group was so effective at using Twitter to reach national audiences that it generated more than four times more engagement on the platform than the content of 18 major Afghan news organizations combined.

The researchers confirmed that the average Taliban Twitter account posted 23 times more content than the average Taliban Facebook page.

The report says that Twitter appears to be benefiting from the Taliban’s presence on the platform. The investigation indicated that Twitter placed sponsored ads paid for by US and Canadian companies, including Amazon, Disney, McDonalds, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. These ads were in 30 percent of Taliban brand accounts, such as Taliban spokespersons and top leaders.

The study also reveals that Twitter continued to place ads on accounts it had flagged for posting “potentially sensitive content.”

“Twitter was monetizing these leaders and the presence of their followers on Twitter. So regardless of what you think about their ability to do as authorities, should Twitter be making money off of those accounts and what they’re doing?” McQuinn said. “If you look at this account and wonder, is this a terrorist network? Obviously, this is a pretty bad group of people. But then you have advertising for McDonald’s and Amazon and CIBC on these pages. It adds a certain amount of legitimacy to those pages.”

The report shed light on Twitter’s failings at moderation. “Only 49 of more than 126,000 accounts in the Taliban support network show evidence of moderating action by Twitter. The vast majority (83%) of Taliban-associated accounts were created before 2021, long before the platforms could claim their presence was allowed because they represented the ruling authority in Afghanistan.”

These accounts also shared content, including graphic images and videos depicting dead and decomposing bodies, in direct violation of Twitter’s stated policies on posting and distribution.
sensitive content. Additionally, three-quarters of the Taliban’s content was produced by just 20 accounts, suggesting that relatively simple moderation efforts could have greatly reduced the content generated by the group.