By David Israel
The Russian-created platform TamTam is emerging as the next major social media hotbed for extremist content, reveals a new study conducted by Dr. Gabriel Weimann, a professor of Communication at the University of Haifa and researcher at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism at Reichman University.
Countermeasures such as surveillance and de-platforming on many social media networks have prompted extremist actors to search for more permissive environments to propagate their content, interact, and make connections. This has made TamTam a popular destination for jihadist and extreme right-wing users.
TamTam is a messaging platform developed by Mail.Ru Group, which is one of the largest internet companies in Russia. With millions of users, TamTam has become a popular messaging app, providing fast, simple, and secure communication. One of the features that sets TamTam apart is its security. TamTam is built around state-of-the-art encryption technology, which ensures that all user data is encrypted and secure. This means that users can communicate with confidence, knowing that their conversations are private. This secure and safe environment attracts, as with many other social media platforms, radical, violent and terrorist actors.
The study, titled TamTam: The Online Drums of Hate, examined 1,016 relevant posts over 12 weeks from December 2022 to February 2023, including 546 posts (53%) on extreme right-wing channels and 475 (47%) on jihadi channels. During these three months, the extremist posts on TamTam garnered nearly 3.4 million views, with an average of 3,600 views per item. While TamTam removed 18 channels that hosted extremist content, the study found that the platform has not attempted to remove or succeeded in removing many posts linked to terrorists or inciting violence. The research also makes clear that extremists use TamTam as a de facto archive and as a forum for exchanging information and social interaction.
“These mass migrations have been common in recent years, with actors moving from Twitter to a more permissive platform such as Telegram. The recent movement to TamTam is the most recent instance of this online migration trend,” said Prof. Weimann.
TamTam is a messaging platform developed by the Mail.Ru Group, one of the largest internet companies in Russia. One of the features that sets TamTam apart is its security. The platform is built around state-of-the-art encryption technology, which ensures that all user data is secure. This environment attracts radical, violent, and terrorist actors, who can trust that their communication on TamTam is kept private.
The network’s laissez-faire approach (no registration is required), growing reach, and multimedia services also attract extremists. For example, ISIS chose TamTam as its platform to claim responsibility for the November 2019 London Bridge attack.
Russian authorities created TamTam as a replacement for Telegram, which the country temporarily blocked in 2018. The TamTam platform allows users to create anonymous accounts that do not require a linked mobile phone number (which is how Telegram accounts are registered), enabling them to sign up with existing accounts on Google or Odnoklassniki, a social network service used mainly in Russia that has more than 200 million registered users.
“TamTam already declared in 2019 that it blocked hundreds of channels after they were used by the Islamic State to claim responsibility for the London Bridge terrorist attack that claimed the lives of two Londoners. Yet, as the results of this study show, Islamic State and other extremist content on TamTam still exists,” Weimann said.
The study found that both visual and verbal violence are more prevalent on channels espousing jihadist beliefs than on channels espousing extreme right-wing beliefs. This disparity can likely be attributed to the distinct ways in which these two groups utilize TamTam.
Extreme right-wing users appear to utilize TamTam as a social media platform, facilitating communication, exchanging ideas and notes, responding to events, and sharing information. These users originate from a diverse array of countries, bringing their individual experiences to the table and forging connections with international networks. This emphasis on social interaction and communication may help explain the lower incidence of verbal and visual violence in extreme right-wing posts.
Meanwhile, jihadists primarily use the platform as a means of archiving and sharing visual materials produced by ISIS, primarily in Arabic. Given that channels espousing jihadist beliefs appear to view the platform through this practical lens of storage and dissemination — devoid of interaction, exchange, or social relationships — they place a greater emphasis on verbal and visual violence as tools to propagate their extreme beliefs, a finding consistent with other studies.
The average number of views per TamTam post containing visual violence was 5,182, about three times higher than the 1,742 views per item with no visual violence. Similarly, items containing verbal violence had an average of 5,305 views, almost four times the average of 1,357 views for items without verbal violence.
“There is a pressing need for new policy solutions to combat the dissemination of extremist content,” Weimann said. “The persistent migration of extremists to new platforms poses a significant challenge for intelligence, law enforcement, and counterterrorism agencies. Breaking the cycle of cat-and-mouse chases across platforms requires the development of a new strategy.”
“To break the cycle of abuse, response, and migration, a long-term preemptive strategy based on close collaboration between states and social media developers is needed. Such a collaborative effort between policymakers and developers could identify emerging trends in the next generation of platforms and incorporate institutional safeguards against abuse in their planning and design,” he said.