PGI’s Digital Investigations Team brings you the Digital Threat Digest, SOCMINT and OSINT insights into disinformation, influence operations, and online harms.
This week, I've had the pleasure of attending the Terrorism and Social Media conference in Swansea; meeting and engaging with over 200 of the world’s foremost extremism and counter terrorism researchers and practitioners. Usually, at these types of events I am bombarded with the same kind of complaints: the platforms need to do better; content moderation needs to be slicker; we need more money to understand this niche thing that only impacts 0.004% of internet users; big tech is the modern day Satan personified...and so on. But, this week I was pleasantly surprised - tech platforms were more or less left unscathed, there was no grandiose (pointless) big blue sky thinking headline about removing all harmful material from the internet, and one talk even spoke about the importance of researching with empathy.
One thing that stood out to me, unlike other conferences I’ve attended, is the air of humility - that (more or less) the panels, speakers, and general delegates came to this conference to learn rather than here to sell. While that might be a salesperson’s worst nightmare, as someone deeply invested in the world of violent extremist trust and safety it was a pleasant surprise and made for a very enjoyable experience.
There are a thousand barriers to creating a safer internet, and modern solutions and developments such as regulations and legislation (while critically important) make our jobs even harder to navigate. But, in my opinion, the biggest barrier is our own egos. For the academic and practitioner, the moment you begin to believe you are an ‘expert’ is the moment you will start missing the obvious. For the legislator, the moment you begin to believe the law covers all online harm and protects civilians is the moment the threat actor slips through the loophole. Even for threat actors - the moment you think you’ve perfected your IO or recruitment campaign is the moment someone uncovers it… Improvement and success are stagnated by over-inflated egos - confidence is important in life, but it needs to be paired with a curious humility that keeps you on your own toes, always thinking about the 'So what?'.More about Protection Group International's Digital Investigations
Our Digital Investigations Analysts combine modern exploitative technology with deep human analytical expertise that covers the social media platforms themselves and the behaviours and the intents of those who use them. Our experienced analyst team have a deep understanding of how various threat groups use social media and follow a three-pronged approach focused on content, behaviour and infrastructure to assess and substantiate threat landscapes.
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