London — Islamic State (IS) is increasingly turning to file-hosting websites to spread propaganda in response to social-media crackdowns by Twitter, Facebook and Alphabet’s Google. New York-based threat-analysis firm Flashpoint published research on Tuesday showing the militant group has, instead, been more frequently utilising preserved versions of webpages on sites such as the Internet Archive, file-storage platforms Google Drive and Dropbox, French YouTube competitor Dailymotion.com, and a variety of lesser-known online locker services. "They have had a lot more difficulty maintaining accounts on Twitter and distributing propaganda over it," Ken Wolf, a senior intelligence analyst at Flashpoint, said in an interview, but added that "it’s very easy for these groups to migrate from one platform to the next". Politicians have pressured social media companies — in particular Facebook, Twitter and Google’s YouTube — to do more to keep extremist content off their platforms. The compani...
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