Anonymous Have Now Unleashed Rick Astley In The Battle Against ISIS
Online activists Anonymous are trying to disrupt ISIS by posting links to Rick Astley’s 1980s hit Never Gonna Give You Up in its online feeds.
Known as ‘rickrolling’, the practice of tricking people into clicking on links to the pop video dates back to the earliest days of social media.
The idea is to make the link look like it’s going to be something useful, when in fact it’s an outdated pop cultural artefact - and an unshakeable earworm.
The 80s themed onslaught is part of Anonymous’s new anti-ISIS campaign, launched as a reaction to the Paris terror attacks.
It will be flooding the #SupportISIS hashtag, which could be used by would-be jihadists, with the pop classic after experts warned that social media is one of ISIS’s most effective tools.
But Anonymous is also fighting back with a campaign to have extremist Twitter accounts shut down. It says that more than 28,000 ISIS accounts are now offline as a result of its actions.
In a video statement about its #OpParis campaign, Anonymous said, “It is time to realise that social media is a solid platform for ISIS’s communication as well as neutering their ideas of terror amongst youth.
“We must all work together and use social media to eliminate the accounts used by terrorists. ISIS, we will hunt you and take down your sites, accounts, emails and expose you.
"From now on, there is no safe place for you online. You will be treated like a virus, and we are the cure.”
