In November, Telegram and Europol launched a two-day coordinated campaign focused on removing Islamic State (IS) channels, groups, and pro-Islamic State accounts from the platform. Although Telegram had made previous efforts to take down IS content, the November campaign was far greater in scope. A Europol official discussed the process of tracking Islamic State supporters’ online activities in an interview conducted by researcher Amarnath Amarasingam: “We started flagging terrorist content to Telegram, and gradually we established a channel of communication and cooperation with Telegram…We cover a large number of online service providers, not just Telegram. But at some point last year, we took time to specifically look at Telegram. We did a joint action…we knew that if this went well, it would shake up the community of jihadist propagandist on Telegram.”
The efforts to disrupt IS networks are reflected by Telegram’s “ISIS Watch,” an official channel that “publishes daily updates on banned terrorist content”: