Islamic state activists are creating groups that claim to be anti-ISIS to promote their message.

Islamic state are creating groups that claim to be anti-ISIS to promote their message. (MEMRI).

Since social media platforms such as Facebook will often remove content that blatantly endorses a terrorist group and violates their terms of service, some Islamic State (ISIS) activists on these two platforms have adapted their dissemination strategy accordingly, and are taking a new approach to circulating ISIS content online. They are creating groups that claim to be anti-ISIS, such as “Campaign against ISIS terrorists’ online presence” (a pro-ISIS group on Facebook), or that have seemingly innocuous names such as “Twitter News” (a pro-ISIS channel on Telegram); upon closer inspection, these groups turn out to be circulating content that would be subject to removal.

On Facebook

The “Daesh Propaganda Videos” Facebook group shares official ISIS videos on its page; the term “Daesh” is the Arabic acronym for “ISIS” but is not favored or used by the group itself.

A Facebook group called  “Campaign against ISIS terrorists’ online presence” posts a host of official ISIS videos on its page. This page is nearly identical to the page of a Facebook group under the same name that actually is commited to removing ISIS pages.  A January 28 post by the group features an Al-Hayat Media Center video on the November 2015 Paris attacks; as of this writing, this video hadbeen viewed 2,700 times. Read and see the full story here.