Use of Twitter Helped Taliban Regain Control in Afghanistan, Researchers Find

Twitter was a strategic tool for Taliban operations in overthrowing the Afghanistan leadership during the country’s civil war, and some accounts associated with the oppressive group triggered the company's algorithms to promote ads for well-known Western brands, researchers from New Jersey Institute of Technology, Princeton University and University of Regina found.

"The current perception is that social media platforms moderate malicious actors and violent extremist content, this report demonstrates that this is patently untrue, at least in the case of Twitter," the researchers asserted, in their report, Twitter and the Taliban: Information Campaigning During the Takeover of Afghanistan. "The majority of accounts (82%) were created before 2021, long before Twitter could claim that their content was permissible as the governing authority in Afghanistan."

The study, available at TracesOfConflict.com, presents an in-depth account of the extent and integration of social media in a modern conflict zone.

Accounts amplified

In examining more than 100,000 tweets from 57 Taliban accounts between April and September 2021, the researchers found that several of these accounts were amplified rather than blocked for terms-of-service violations.

Brands including Disney+, Jose Cuervo and The Kelly Clarkson Show appeared in the profile feeds of these Taliban accounts, despite those companies and the Taliban clearly holding opposing views. Advertisements for Food Network, Ford, M&Ms, McDonalds and Royal Bank of Canada were also included.

I think it's more than just a mistake made. The issue is the accounts we see are overtly Taliban mouthpieces

“In examining the alignment between the social media campaign and its kinetic attacks, evidence suggests these operations were conducted in an integrated way, targeting both domestic and international audiences, in five different languages," the study added.

"The Taliban relied heavily upon Twitter in facilitating its takeover of Afghanistan and as the primary entry point to the Taliban's online ecosystem. … Only 31 of over 126,000 accounts in the Taliban broader ecosystem appeared subject to overt Twitter action," the researchers stated. "Further, Twitter is advertising on 21 of the Taliban's core accounts, monetizing their audiences. Of the accounts that were flagged as containing sensitive information by Twitter, there is also evidence that Twitter continued to place advertisements on these account profiles."

Disturbing trend

Revealing research about the thriving Taliban presence on Twitter began early last summer — while Twitter banned China's U.S. Embassy for dehumanizing posts about Muslims, former U.S. President Donald Trump for false news about the 2020 election and Chicago's historic Music Box Theatre for playing copyrighted music without permission — when Cody Buntain, then serving as an assistant professor of informatics at NJIT's Ying Wu College of Computing, partnered with Laura Courchesne, a doctoral candidate and disinformation specialist at Oxford, and Brian McQuinn, an assistant professor and armed conflict resolution expert at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan. Courchesne and McQuinn are founding members of the Centre for Artificial Intelligence, Data and Conflict.

Having already studied social media use of armed groups in Libya and Syria, the researchers looked at Afghanistan and began noticing the disturbing trend, which Buntain does not think is a simple glitch.

"I think it's more than just a mistake made. The issue is the accounts we see are overtly Taliban mouthpieces. It's not a question of these accounts occasionally tweeting content about the Taliban," Buntain said. "So, it's very clear for a number of these accounts they are overtly associated with this armed group. As a result, when we see promoted tweets embedded in these profiles … that to me doesn't suggest some fluke. It suggests the policies in place are not sufficient to detect a clearly obvious group like the Taliban," let alone other hateful organizations, perhaps domestic, that are more subtle about their intentions.

"Some of these accounts are sharing gruesome and violent imagery. It's not a question of political content or messages," he added.

Twitter has taken some action against the Taliban accounts but not nearly enough, said Buntain, now an assistant professor at the University of Maryland. "It's not just a problem for Twitter. It creates this gateway into the Taliban's messaging."

Buntain further anticipates the Taliban and similar groups will begin colonizing Instagram because of its youth-oriented audience and its easy account registration process, just like Twitter.