Saudi counter-extremism center, Telegram collaborate to remove extremist content

Etidal has been collaborating with Telegram over the past three years in reviewing online terrorism content in Arabic. Both organizations have agreed to expand their coordination to detect and remove more systematically Arabic material that glorifies terrorism.

During a four-week period, a team of Etidal’s specialist researchers performed an assessment of several thousands of channels suspected to host terrorist propaganda, detecting patterns in their abuse of the platform’s services.

The findings were shared with Telegram to allow them to review the detected content disseminated by terrorist groups on their platform.

The final removal of the referred material is a voluntary activity by the social media platforms, taking into consideration their own terms and conditions.

The coordinated action against online terrorist propaganda focused mainly on the distribution and production of terrorist material by Daesh, Tahrir al-Sham and Al-Qaeda-affiliated media outlets.

Among the items referred were media files - PDFs, videos and audio - uploaded by groups on Telegram and public Telegram channels hosting these materials.

It is estimated that 672,972 pieces of content and links were removed through this partnership.

Etidal secretary-general, Dr. Mansour Al-Shammari, welcomed the enhanced cooperation and emphasized the center’s commitment to supporting Telegram in combating terrorism and violent extremism on its platform.

“We seek cooperation and partnership in a systematic, accurate and professional manner, using the center’s ideological, media and digital capabilities in order to achieve the desired noble goals.We will measure the success of our collaboration today and hope to establish such partnership as a model for other technology platforms to follow.”

A Telegram representative said: “We found partnering with Etidal productive and useful. We support free speech and peaceful protest, but terrorism and propaganda of violence have no place on Telegram. We are constantly improving our internal procedures and moderation tools to ensure that our platform stays free of abuse.”