ISIS has more followers than you

When I first heard that ISIS was on twitter I thought it was a joke. I found it laugh out loud funny that a terrorist organization had a bigger twitter following than anyone I knew. But a big part of the reason I was so incredulous was because the Islamic state mostly shouts about the evils of the west and yet here they were, using our western social media to “recruit, radicalize and raise funds” as was mentioned in J.M. Berger’s article on ISIS and twitter. The very thing that they claim is evil, they’ve used to their advantage. In fact, as Berger writes about, they are using it significantly better than many other groups and even social media and communications specialists. It’s two parts terrifying, 1 part baffling, and 1 part intriguing, how they have managed to so successfully use our own tools for promoting freedom of speech and democracy against us.