The internet is an avenue that terrorists, drug pushers, along with other criminal elements have explored since quite a while now. Social media in particular during the past few years has emerged as an effective tool for these to forward their agenda. Militant organization including ISIS are known to use platforms like Twitter and Facebook to recruit new members.
You would assume that the presence of banned outfits on social media would dwindle in Pakistan due to harsh steps taken by the government. Especially given the crackdown on social media in the past few months and the cyber law bill coming into full effect. However, that doesn’t appear to be the case. As one publication puts it, they are hiding in plain sight.
Lashkar-e-Islam, one of the 65 banned organizations in Pakistan, has a fully operational Facebook page
According to a report published on Voice of America Pakistan, there around 40 banned outfits that are active on social media. The report cites a senior official by the Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency (FIA). Lashkar-e-Islam, in particular, is known for promoting a campaign against minority sects and a ‘Holy War’ of sorts against India.
According to a report published on Dawn, these banned outfits have over 700 pages on Facebook
Over 160,000 people have liked pages of these groups. Around eight of the banned outfits had collectively made more than 350 posts. These pages mainly post in Urdu or Roman Urdu. This indicates that the emphasis is mainly to resonate with local audiences. The report adds that a few groups also post in regional languages, particularly Sindhi or Balochi.
Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat (ASWJ) has perhaps the largest presence on social media compared to all others
The organization was banned in 2012, however, the organization is known to still carry out its operations; there are around 200 pages of these groups on social media. Other banned outfits include the likes of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Tehreek-e-Taliban Swat, Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi, and Jamat-ul-Ahrar. It is not clear how many of the groups and pages under these banners are officially run by the organization. Some of them are said to be operated by followers of these organizations.
Facebook has maintained that it has a strict zero tolerance policy against pages being operated by militant outfits
“When it comes to terrorism, Facebook has a strict zero–tolerance policy,” said Facebook’s official spokesperson to Wired. “We work aggressively to ensure that we do not have terrorists or terror groups using the site, and we also remove any content that praises or supports terrorism.”
However, a major problem here is that Facebook mainly depends on a user policing model when it comes to objectionable material on the platform.
Which means, users have to report and give a reason to substantiate their actions. A lot of times, not enough people report especially with regards to supposedly militant outfits. In regards to activity by ISIS, though, Facebook has been a bit active; the company has blocked accounts and comments. The use of Twitter meanwhile has grown substantially. According to Wired, ISIS supporters used some 46,000 accounts on Twitter. After ignoring this activity for a while, Twitter more recently has worked to suspend such accounts.