Hamas Social Media Following Has Skyrocketed Since Its Attack

Hamas is barred from most social media platforms.

Hamas is a designated foreign terror organization in the United States, and new internet laws in the European Union (EU) mean large social media platforms can face penalties for hosting terroristic content. I Photo: Soman Wikimedia Commons

But its following has surged on popular messaging app Telegram since its Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

One account of the al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Hamas movement, has seen its following triple, and there has been a ten-fold increase in the number of views of videos and other content posted by the account.

Hamas is a designated foreign terror organization in the United States, and new internet laws in the European Union (EU) mean large social media platforms can face penalties for hosting terroristic content, Donie O’Sullivan and Brian Fung reported for CNN.

Meta and Google prohibit Hamas accounts, but Telegram, a company founded by a Russian-born entrepreneur, now based in Dubai, has decided to allow the group to continue use its service.

X, formerly Twitter, says it also has a ban on Hamas and has removed “hundreds” of “Hamas-affiliated accounts.”

Last week, however, the European Union (EU) announced it was opening an investigation into the company about disinformation and illegal content about the conflict on its platform.

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