GIFCT’s 2025 Working Groups brought together representatives from tech companies, civil society, and governments from 40 countries across 6 continents. Groups focused on three critical themes that reflect the priorities and concerns shared by GIFCT’s members and stakeholder communities, and worked with GIFCT to create tangible outputs and guidance to evolve our organization’s critical tools and processes.
GIFCT Working Groups were launched in 2020 to facilitate multistakeholder dialogue, foster understanding, and produce outputs to directly support the GIFCT mission of preventing terrorists and violent extremists from exploiting digital platforms. Each year, the Working Groups deliver guidance and solutions to industry, government, and subject-matter experts. The selected annual themes reflect trends in the terrorist and violent extremist threat landscape and the needs and priorities of the tech sector, and inform GIFCT programming and activities.
Investigators Community of Practice
GIFCT’s Investigators Community of Practice brought together a network of investigation, analytic, incident response, and operational trust and safety (T&S) professionals from GIFCT member companies to learn from one another, brainstorm new solutions, and discuss emerging trends. This group periodically leveraged external experts to provide substantive briefings. The group produced new information sharing solutions, including the members’ portal, Compass, aimed at better organizing expert resources and contextual information for members, and an updated Information Sharing Non-Disclosure Agreement (ISNDA), increasing the capabilities of investigators in line with legal and policy frameworks to counter terrorist and violent extremist (TVE) activity while ensuring human rights are upheld. For a summary of the ICOP sessions, details of key outcomes, and a forward look, please see our dedicated blogpost.
Artificial Intelligence Working Group
As technologies continue to evolve, so does TVE experimentation and exploitation of new products. GIFCT brought together a diverse range of participants to map how TVE actors currently exploit Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies across the spectrum of recruitment, radicalization, and mobilization to violence. The Working Group built on the themes of GIFCT’s report “Artificial Intelligence: Threats, Opportunities, and Policy Frameworks for Countering VNSAs” from early 2025.
The group also consolidated and identified best practices and standards for AI safety products. Based on this mapping, the group presented potential ways forward in countering TVE exploitation of AI technologies. Insights and recommendations from this Working Group were outlined in the output report: “Artificial Intelligence: Threats and Opportunities.”
Addressing Youth Radicalization and Mobilization Working Group
TVE exploitation of young people is not a new phenomenon, but the ways in which young people are targeted and exploited online have become a central focus across counterterrorism and harm prevention frameworks in recent years. Groups like Al-Qaida and ISIS have historically exploited children, but emerging technologies and the volume and speed of technological change have raised widespread concerns about the implications for youth. This Working Group brought together tech company representatives working on safety and positive-intervention tools, alongside policymakers and practitioners, many of whom are managing youth resilience or intervention programs. The group produced three outputs facilitated by thematic sessions focused on mapping trends and good practices, deepening multistakeholder understanding of adversarial shifts in youth radicalization and mobilization, and identifying tools and solutions to support the development and delivery of effective interventions online.
Themes highlighted by the Working Group informed an Anthology of Trends and Insights, produced by GIFCT’s academic arm, the Global Network on Extremism and Technology, complete with additional research, framing, and an annotated bibliography. The issue of nihilistic violent extremism (NVE) emerged as a key focus for the group, generating widespread concern about the cross-platform harms and implications online. This resulted in a policy paper, Beyond Extremism: Platform Responses to Online Subcultures of Nihilistic Violence, written by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, which provides an overview of the specific online threat landscape of nihilistic violence subcultures and outlines the implications for platform measures to protect users.
GIFCT, in partnership with Mythos Labs, was pleased to deliver an overhaul and update of GIFCT’s Campaign Toolkit, providing resources and guidance in five different languages for individuals and organizations looking to take action against terrorism and violent extremism online. The website is designed to be a one-stop shop for resources and tools to help activists of any type make a difference, regardless of their level of expertise. The Working Group brought forward new resources and support links to add to the toolkit, and updated the site with a youth-specific section to guide safety practitioners working with younger audiences online.
Working Group Launch Event
On February 18, 2026, GIFCT was pleased to host a virtual gathering to highlight the impacts and outcomes of the 2025 Working Groups, further connecting subject-matter experts, practitioners, and the tech sector. The webinar focused on some key findings and recommendations and helped ensure that GIFCT’s work and tools continue to reflect the evolving threat environment, member needs, and global lessons learned. During the webinar, GIFCT also launched its 2026 Working Group themes and opened a call for applicants.
GIFCT Launches 2026 Working Groups
GIFCT’s Year 2026 Working Group themes will focus on issues highlighted by key stakeholders and members in light of evolving global trends and challenges.
- Signals Community of Practice
- Gaming and Youth Working Group
- Countering the Financing of Terrorism Online
When GIFCT’s Working Groups began in 2020, we ran monthly, hour-long sessions that included the entire cohort of each Working Group. Since then, based on participant feedback, we have transitioned to a model of less frequent sessions, typically tailored to specific research questions or themes or tied to specific outputs; each session will be composed of a selection of participants based on their expertise and interests.
GIFCT aims to integrate our multistakeholder network within groups, with meetings held on a varying basis depending on the scope, themes, and needs of each group. Working Groups dubbed “Communities of Practice” typically focus more on tech practitioner-focused sessions and strategic dialogue with our multistakeholder cohort, whereas traditional Working Groups focus primarily on multistakeholder sessions. Some participants may also wish to lead on funded outputs attached to the group.
GIFCT invites international experts from across different sectors to apply.
2026 Working Groups Application
Signals Community of Practice
This Community of Practice will bring together teams from GIFCT member companies and platforms working towards joining GIFCT (as part of GIFCT’s Membership Advisory Program) to develop a better understanding of threat detection and information sharing across platforms. This Working Group will build off the gaps identified in GIFCT’s 2025 Investigators Community of Practice.
Structured around three interconnected segments—audio content analysis, URL sharing protocols, and user journey mapping—SCOP will enable participants to discuss actual threat content and brainstorm how it informs their trust and safety approaches, moving beyond hashing to develop a shared understanding of threats while maintaining appropriate legal and ethical safeguards. SCOP is designed primarily for tech company technical teams, with select sessions open to external expert presentations and dialogue. The Community will combine GIFCT member expertise with human rights perspectives to strengthen protective capabilities while upholding fundamental safeguards.
This Community of Practice will focus primarily on GIFCT member-focused sessions; multistakeholder participants will be invited to specific sessions where their expertise is most applicable.
Gaming and Youth Working Group
The aim of this Working Group will be to identify and scale best practices to prevent TVEs from exploiting online games, gaming-adjacent services, and the wider gaming community, particularly concerning younger audiences. This theme builds off of previous outputs and addresses gaps and recommendations raised by GIFCT’s 2024 Gaming Community of Practice and 2025 Addressing Youth Radicalization and Mobilization Working Group.
This Working Group will invite GIFCT member companies and wider online gaming representatives, government representatives, and subject matter experts to collaborate, share knowledge, and identify best practices. The group will host both multistakeholder sessions and tech industry-specific sessions. Key topics of discussion will include how best to incorporate age-sensitivities in safety-by-design and platform set-up; best practices for encouraging in-game user reporting mechanisms; and identifying potential signals of TVE activity across online gaming spaces for increased signal sharing.
This Working Group will primarily convene a multistakeholder cohort and also allow for GIFCT member-focused sessions, to provide space for GIFCT members to collaborate.
Countering the Financing of Terrorism Online Working Group
This Working Group will bring together a multistakeholder cohort of international experts, practitioners, and industry representatives to consider the emerging threats and risk areas in terrorist financial activity online. This group will consider how modern TVE networks have exploited online outlets to further their financing and map where there are gaps in traditional counterterrorism strategies when applied to the online threat landscape. The group will analyze the various financial touchpoints across different platforms and payment types, such as marketplace, cryptocurrency pathways, funding campaigns, and traditional financial information shared on messaging platforms. Additionally, the group will explore areas of potential convergence between terrorist groups and criminal organizations, and their implications for managing online risks and threats, and may also consider the implications for the implementation of sanctions regimes, including the UN “1267” sanctions. The group will aim to map the threat and highlight lessons learned and good practices from across various sectors. The Working Group is designed to exchange knowledge between relevant tech platforms, practitioners, countering the financing of terrorism experts, human rights specialists, and researchers.
This Working Group will primarily convene a multistakeholder cohort and also allow for GIFCT member-focused sessions, to provide space for GIFCT members to collaborate.
Join us in shaping the future of online safety. Apply to participate in a GIFCT 2026 Working Group by March 4, 2026, and contribute your expertise to this critical mission.
2026 Working Groups Application
