Here’s How A Google Think-tank Wants To Counter ISIS’s Online Propaganda

Although tech firms have been labouring for years to counter ISIS’ digital propaganda machine, the latter has set a new standard for aggressive online recruitment. Twitter has suspended several accounts only to see them arise again while other services like YouTube and Facebook have fought an endless war of content removal to keep the group’s videos offline. Entering this scenario to help is Jigsaw, the Google-owned tech incubator and think tank, recently known as Google Ideas.

Jigsaw has been working over the past year to advance a new program which will use a blend of Google’s search advertising algorithms and YouTube’s video platform to target aspiring ISIS recruits in order to deter them from joining the group. The program, termed the Redirect Method and about to be launched in a new phase this month, places advertising alongside results for any keywords and phrases that Jigsaw has determined people attracted to ISIS commonly search for.However to persuade the people already drawn into ISIS, instead of creating anti-ISIS messages Jigsaw curates them from YouTube. In Green’s words-

We thought, what if the content exists already? We knew if it wasn’t created explicitly for this purpose, it would be more authentic and therefore more compelling.

In the previous two months, more than 300,000 people were drawn to the anti-ISIS YouTube channels. The viewers spent more than twice as long watching the most effective playlists than the best estimates of how long people view YouTube as a whole.

Jigsaw picked more than 1,700 keywords that activated ads leading to the anti-ISIS playlists. The selected terms are believed to be the ones searched by the most committed ISIS recruits including phrases like “jihad in Syria” along with names of extremist leaders who had preached ISIS recruitment. The ads, however, took a light-touch approach, with phrases like “Is ISIS Legitimate?” or “Want to Join ISIS?” rather than obvious anti-ISIS messages.

Green says that the Redirect Method, is not meant to track potential ISIS recruits for arrest, the main intention being education. Jigsaw in that sense is fighting the battle of countering the jihadi indoctrination to prevent the rise of recruits in ISIS.