Diaspora social networking site can't stop Islamic State messages

Social media service Diaspora, an open source, decentralized service consisting of individual nodes, utilizes thousands of private servers. Unfortunately, there isn't a way for the Diaspora project team to edit or remove content from a network node, and that's likely why IS chose it.

After being booted from Twitter and other social networking sites, the Islamic State is looking for new alternatives. In an attempt to spread images, videos and published propaganda to shock the west and appeal to new recruits, IS wants to have a collection of social media accounts to use.

"As many of the members of the core team are pod administrators ourselves, we know it can be hard to detect such users," the Diaspora blog reads. "We rely on our community members to use the report function to alert their podmin to any post or comment they believe to be a cause for concern. However, because this is such a crucial issue, we have also accumulated a list of accounts related to IS fighters, which are spread over a large number of pods, and we are in the process of talking to the podmins of those pods."

It's good to hear that Diaspora wants to be proactive to try to eliminate IS accounts from the social networking service - even if it's not the easiest process.