IS developing own social media platform

Islamic State militants are developing their own social media platform to avoid security crackdowns on their communications and propaganda, the head of the European Union's police agency said yesterday.

Europol Director Rob Wainwright said the new online platform had been uncovered during a 48-hour operation against Internet extremism last week.

"Within that operation it was revealed IS was now developing its very own social media platform, its own part of the Internet to run its agenda," Wainwright told a security conference in London. "It does show that some members of Daesh (IS), at least, continue to innovate in this space."

During a Europol-coordinated crackdown on IS and al Qaeda material, which involved officials from the United States, Belgium, Greece, Poland, and Portugal, more than 2,000 extremist items were identified, hosted on 52 social media platforms.

Jihadists have often relied on mainstream social media platforms for online communications and to spread propaganda, with private channels on messaging app Telegram being especially popular over the past year.

Technology firms, such as Facebook and Google, have come under increasing political pressure to do more to tackle extremist material online and to make it harder for groups such as Islamic State to communicate through encrypted services to avoid detection by security services.

However, Wainwright said that IS, by creating its own service, was responding to concerted pressure from intelligence agencies, police forces and the tech sector, and were trying to found a way around it.