RIYADH: More than six million extremist posts and nearly 2,000 host channels have been removed from the social media platform Telegram since the start of the year due to monitoring by the Saudi-based Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology.
The center, also known as Etidal, said that the deleted channels belonged to three terrorist organizations, Daesh, Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham and Al-Qaeda. The content included audio, videos and PDF files in Arabic.
Etidal found 2,773,902 items on 477 channels referencing Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, 1,807,215 items on 1,040 channels sympathetic to Daesh and 1,423,101 items on 323 channels with links to Al-Qaeda.
It said that over the course of just one day - Jan. 9 - 451,911 items with an extremist nature were either shared or referred. It found 101 channels related to extremist activity were created in one day towards the end of March, Etidal added.
The center began collaborating with Telegram in February 2022 to monitor and identify extremist content posted in Arabic. It has since helped identify and remove 21,026,169 items of an extremist nature and close 8,664 related channels.
The cooperation aims to protect Telegram users from ideological influences and extremist content.
The UN Office of Counterterrorism hailed Etidal’s efforts in combating terrorism in August, saying that it had practical insights into several extremist groups.
