After the clampdown by Twitter and YouTube on Islamic State (Isis) propaganda, the social media war has spread to open-source social network Diaspora – where the content is impossible to remove.

Isis accounts are posting propaganda images, video and text via Diaspora sites, and the site’s developers who once promised, in a now-deleted blogpost, that it offered “a brighter future for all of us” are powerless to stop them. But they are concerned at legal implications for other users who are connected to the network.

“Diaspora started off with the purpose to be decentralised, which has both good and bad aspects,” explained Dr Bernie Hogan, who researches social media and identify at the Oxford Internet Institute. “The good part is that you don’t get state interference and the bad is that you don’t get state interference.”

Launched in 2010, Diaspora is unlike Twitter, Facebook and most other social networks which rely on a central database. Instead it has an open, decentralised platform, with an estimated 1 million users. Anyone can download use the Diaspora software to set up their own “pod”, which is hosted on a private server but connects to the rest of the Diaspora network to share posts, messages and media. As on Facebook or Twitter, users have to choose who they follow in order to see their posts.

Diaspora was originally marketed as a user-owned social networking alternative to Facebook, that respects user privacy and data, to “be whoever you want to be” and “interact with whomever you choose in whatever way you want”. In the now-deleted blogpost from September 2011, its American founders said that “... our distributed design means no big corporation will ever control Diaspora. Diaspora will never sell your social life to advertisers, and you won’t have to conform to someone’s arbitrary rules or look over your shoulder before you speak.”

Open network

But the arrival of activists supporting Isis on the network has raised concerns for the administrators, who say there could be legal risks to pod administrators as content - including Isis propaganda - is copied onto it from the network.

The Diaspora Foundation, which controls the development of the software said in an unsigned statement on its website: “There is no central server, and there is therefore no way for the project’s core team to manipulate or remove contents from a particular node in the network (which we call a “pod”). This may be one of the reasons which attracted Isis activists to our network.”

People who own and run the individual pods, called “podmins”, can intervene if they desire or are compelled to do so, as happens on Twitter and other commercial social networks.

“Because this is such a crucial issue, we have accumulated a list of accounts related to Isis fighters, which are spread over a large number of pods, and we are in the process of talking to the podmins of those pods,” the foundation said. “So far, all of the larger pods have removed the Isis-related accounts and posts. This includes a high-volume account on JoinDiaspora.com which was apparently used as a main distribution channel.”

The foundation went to great lengths to point out that despite creating and maintaining the software, it has no direct control over how it is used, but would do anything it could to notify individual pod owners to the risks of hosting Isis material.

‘End up being a game of a whack-a-mole’

“I don’t think third-party censorship is going to be very successful - it’s just going to end up being a game of whack-a-mole,” said Hogan. “Instead we need to be impervious to this content and let it sadly wash over us.”

Hogan explained that the only way to combat this kind of propaganda was to not share it, not report it and not give those posting it a platform.

“It’s a collective, social responsibility to ensure that violent, potentially contagious content that could reinforce messages that we find problematic does not spread,” said Hogan.

Isis accounts have popped up on various social networks beyond the mainstream like Twitter and Facebook. Diaspora is the latest, but Isis has used Friendica and Quitter; both promptly shut down Isis accounts.

“Isis is certainly running out of platforms, especially those curated by third parties like Twitter,” said Hogan. “They could find their way to the dark web, but it obviously wouldn’t be particular useful for recruitment.”

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