Europol has announced that it helped eight European countries to identify and remove terrorist, racist, and xenophobic propaganda on gaming platforms for a Referral Action Day aimed at combating online radicalization. The eight participating countries were Denmark, Finland, Germany, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom.
The day of action led to the referral of thousands of URLs that lead to dangerous and illicit online material. They identified 5,408 links to jihadist content, 1,070 links to violent right-wing extremist and terrorist content, and 105 links to racist and xenophobic content. Europol said the content creation and spread are quite complex.
It explained that material may be recorded within an online game or its chat function, altered with extremist jargon, suggestive emoji, or music, and then shared on social media platforms for a wider reach. Europol also said that those creating and spreading extremist content sometimes reenact terrorist attacks, school shootings, or execution scenes in 3D gameplay, edit the footage, and share it.
One of the more troubling findings is that gaming platforms are being misused to recruit minors into violent extremist groups or to livestream real attacks and suicides. Europol found illicit content across various platform types, including gameplay broadcasting, video on demand, community exchanges, and hybrid services.
The idea to go after extremists on gaming platforms came about from enforcement authorities across Europe who noticed their misuse for radicalization.
In a world where anyone can jump in front of a camera and spread their views to thousands or millions of people, it’s important that law enforcement goes after bad actors, especially those promoting violence in order to protect people from radicalization.
A detailed summary of the work carried out by the European Union Internet Referral Unit (EU IRU) in 2024 will be released in an upcoming report. You can learn more about it here.