This past year has seen the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) expand its community of industry member companies, strengthen its connections with global multistakeholders, and improve its technical solutions, tools, and resources. As GIFCT reflects on its accomplishments and growth in 2025, it remains steadfast in its commitment to strengthen the collective capacity of its membership and to continue advancing transparency, human rights, and capacity development across its work with members.
Throughout 2025, GIFCT built on the previous year’s work to strengthen engagement with its global multistakeholder community, create a more inclusive and sustainable governance structure, and increase the value it offers to members. As new threats emerge and technologies evolve, GIFCT’s work will continue to be guided by industry innovations and solutions, cross-sector collaboration, stakeholder feedback, and the opportunities identified for improvement. Together with its members and partners, GIFCT remains dedicated to improving online safety for all.
Membership
New GIFCT Members
In 2025, GIFCT welcomed six new platforms—Anthropic, SoundCloud, Roblox, TikTok, GitHub, and 4D Hype. These new members strengthen GIFCT’s reach into key areas, including audio streaming, AI, gaming, and software development. These members continue to diversify GIFCT’s membership and provide it with access to greater industry learning and solutions while also reflecting the ever-changing threat landscape.
GIFCT Launches MAP
In 2025, GIFCT launched the in-house Membership Advisory Program (MAP), which supports current and prospective members and ensures continued alignment with our criteria and tailored support designed to meet each company’s unique needs, such as:
- crafting and revising their policies and/or community guidelines,
- helping improve their human rights commitments,
- and strengthening their commitments to transparency reporting.
The new MAP provides GIFCT members with more direct access to GIFCT’s technical solutions, tools, and resources, including tailored research from the Global Network on Extremism and Technology (GNET).
Naureen Chowdhury Fink, GIFCT Executive Director
“2025 was a truly transformative year for GIFCT. The needs and feedback of our expanded member community shaped our goals and achievements, from the updated tools and resources to the thematic focus areas, informed by our active and engaged stakeholder community. Through our new in-house Membership Advisory Program, we have been in direct contact with several platforms exploring membership, and it is exciting to be able to offer them real-time support. The updated IRF, the new human rights trainings and learning modules, and our targeted GNET publications serve a growing membership of nearly 40 companies. However, adversaries continue to adapt, and with these tools in hand, we will also continue to work with our members and partners to evolve and ensure that GIFCT remains agile and effective in building a safer internet for all.” – Naureen Chowdhury Fink, GIFCT.
Signal Sharing
GIFCT Updates IRF
GIFCT recently updated its Incident Response Framework (IRF), the mechanism that helps member companies respond to online dimensions of offline violence. The updated version streamlines the process to offer a more flexible and nimble response for members. Developed in consultation with a wide variety of stakeholders across diverse regions and platforms, including an independent review of GIFCT’s incident response policies and a multistakeholder Working Group, the new IRF improves information sharing, communication, and tailored support, while increasing transparency and optimizing member engagement.
Compass Houses Member Resources
The members-only Compass portal now allows GIFCT members to access a full suite of resources designed to empower their trust and safety efforts. The comprehensive repository includes bespoke knowledge products, intel bulletins, guidebooks, and a Wiki of material relating to IRF-activation events and actors.
Reflections from GIFCT’s Operating Board
“The continued growth of GIFCT since its inception speaks to the critical importance of building a collaborative community committed to our shared mission. From the critical role of the hash-sharing database and the Incident Response Framework to the multistakeholder-informed findings of the Working Groups, GIFCT’s resources continue to provide tangible value, empowering its diverse member community to prevent terrorists and violent extremists from exploiting digital spaces.” – Leslie Miller, YouTube.
Research and Analysis
Global Network on Extremism and Technology
2025 saw GIFCT’s academic research arm, the Global Network on Extremism and Technology (GNET), housed at King’s College London, produce over 100 Insights, including research on artificial intelligence, terrorist financing, hard tech innovation, and youth radicalization and mobilization. In addition to these public outputs, GNET authors have supported GIFCT member companies by providing targeted resources in response to events or needs, and flagging potentially violative content for platform review.
In May, GNET convened its fifth annual conference, which brought together representatives from academia, civil society, industry, and government to examine the evolving relationship between terrorism, violent extremism, and technology.
Julien Bellaiche, GNET’s Research Director, presenting during the Fifth Annual GNET Conference
GIFCT Knowledge Products
GIFCT continues to foster thought leadership and knowledge development. To that end, GIFCT publications and events deliver actionable analysis and recommendations to ensure that members stay informed about terrorist threats and trends, as well as the violent extremist exploitation of digital platforms. In 2025, these outputs included a GIFCT webinar cohosted with the Tech Coalition on the intersections of TVE online content and child harms, a report on artificial intelligence and countering violent non-state actors produced in collaboration with the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, and post-IRF activation intelligence bulletins for GIFCT member companies.
Multistakeholder Workshop on Countering Tech-Related Terrorism in West Africa
Knowledge Exchange and Collaboration
2025 Events and Partnerships
In 2025, GIFCT convened government officials, civil society, and industry representatives for a workshop focused on the intersections of tech, terrorism, and counterterrorism in West Africa at the International Institute for Criminal Justice and the Rule of Law (IIJ). Participants shared insights on regional threats and trends, and identified collaborative solutions and lessons learned to help prevent and counter terrorism and violent extremism online and across the continent.
In June, GIFCT Executive Director Naureen Chowdhury Fink and Assistant Secretary-General Natalia Gherman, Executive Director of the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED), signed a Memorandum of Understanding, providing for close cooperation between CTED and GIFCT in technical areas set forth in UN Security Council resolutions on counterterrorism. GIFCT also partnered with the Konrad Adenauer Foundation on a series of briefings highlighting the findings of the AI and non-state actors policy paper.
Later in the year, GIFCT, in coordination with CTED, cohosted an event on the margins of the 80th UN General Assembly to strengthen collective efforts to address the evolving ways in which terrorists and violent extremists target children and youth, both online and offline. GIFCT also cohosted a roundtable with Public Safety Canada (PSC) and CTED to foster an exchange of insights, lessons learned, and good practices from diverse fields, including safeguarding children online, trust and safety, counterterrorism, and the protection of children in armed conflict.
The year concluded with GIFCT’s Annual Member Forum, hosted in partnership with its Operating Board Chair, YouTube, for a day of sharing insights, collaboration, and forward planning.
2025 Working groups
Working Groups aim to further GIFCT’s mission by providing a space for understanding and expertise, thereby growing GIFCT’s capacity to support member companies and counterterrorism and counter-extremism practitioners. These groups each bring together experts from diverse stakeholder groups, geographies, and disciplines to offer advice on critical themes related to countering terrorism and violent extremism online and deliver on targeted substantive projects.
GIFCT’s 2025 Working Groups convened 178 participants from 40 countries across six continents to focus on three themes: Investigators Community of Practice; Artificial Intelligence: Threats and Opportunities; and Addressing Youth Radicalization and Mobilization. Related Working Group outputs will be available in early 2026.
Countering New Threats With Cross-Sector Solutions panel alongside the opening of the 80th UN General Assembly Session
“GIFCT plays a critical role as a convener of tech, government, and civil society, which is essential to building safer online spaces, resilient to terrorists and violent extremists. As Chair of the Independent Advisory Committee, we want to empower GIFCT to fully leverage the collective capacity of all its members. GIFCT’s greatest opportunity is to be a framework that can enable innovation in preventing and countering harm, empowering its members to develop approaches that keep pace with the ever-evolving threat landscape.” Jonathan Russell, Violence Prevention Network and Chair of GIFCT’s Independent Advisory Committee.
Governance
New IAC Chair and Members
Earlier this year, GIFCT welcomed the appointment of Jonathan Russell as the new Chair of the Independent Advisory Committee (IAC). Formerly serving as IAC Vice-Chair, Jonathan Russell is the International Director at Violence Prevention Network and brings over a decade of experience in counterterrorism, civil society, and tech. The IAC is composed of representatives from civil society and government and offers advice and recommendations on GIFCT’s strategic goals and activities. In addition to Rusell’s appointment, GIFCT is pleased to welcome new IAC members, whose expertise and perspectives will further enrich the committee’s role in guiding GIFCT’s mission.
GIFCT would also like to express its deep appreciation to the previous IAC Chair, Ghayda Hassan, for providing leadership and coordinating the IAC over the past three years, and to the outgoing IAC members for their support of and engagement with GIFCT.
New Operating Board Members
Following the 2025 Annual Member Forum, GIFCT is pleased to welcome Discord and Twitch as newly elected members of its Operating Board for 2026. Their appointments reflect the confidence of the broader GIFCT membership in the expertise, experience, and commitment both companies bring to the shared goal of preventing terrorists and violent extremists from exploiting digital platforms.
As GIFCT’s membership continues to grow, Discord and Twitch’s leadership will help ensure that the diversity of GIFCT’s expanded member community is reflected in the strategic guidance and decisions made by the Board. The appointment of these new board members shows GIFCT’s continued effort to shape its governance in ways that better serve its members and support sustainable planning in a constantly changing threat environment.
Human Rights
New Resources
GIFCT, in partnership with BSR, delivered a series of human rights training modules for member companies and prospective members throughout 2025. Additionally, GIFCT published a Training Modules Booklet containing practical tools and lessons, which equip companies with shared language, practical tools, and concrete next steps so that interventions are targeted, proportionate, and transparent.
The recent expansion of the Operating Board also reflects GIFCT’s commitment to strengthening its human rights framework. After seeking global stakeholder input, GIFCT published a Human Rights Impact Assessment that set guidelines grounded in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. One key recommendation was to expand the Board beyond the four founding members, a step GIFCT has now put into practice.
Looking Ahead
Looking forward to 2026, GIFCT remains focused on strengthening its efforts to deliver on its mission of preventing terrorists and violent extremists from exploiting digital platforms. In mid-2024, its Operating Board adopted the 2025–2027 Strategic Plan developed by GIFCT, with input from the IAC, to support and strengthen its community and enhance the capacity and capability of the tech industry and its partners. The year ahead will mark a period of strategic growth, operational enhancements, global engagement, and deeper industry collaboration.
