Ever wanting to appear hip and cool in a western-culture kind of way, the Islamic State is now making use of the popular teen video app TikTok, used mostly to share dance and music videos, to post hellish videos of beheadings and other executions.
The videos, shared from several accounts, were discovered this week and were initially believed to be merely propaganda clips. Later was it discovered that some of the videos recorded torture and murder, bizarrely mingled with lighthearted emojis.
The videos have been flagged and removed by the company.
The videos showed jihadis wearing hoods pushing captives to the ground and beheading them with machetes, according to the Wall Street Journal. Other videos shows assailants shooting people at close range.
The clips were disturbingly edited to include lighthearted flair, like bursts of confetti, stickers of pink hearts, or peace sign emojis.
The execution videos were shared from three different accounts that boasted between 175 to 1,000 followers. Each of the execution videos received from 25 to 125 likes.
The clips first started to emerge on TikTok three weeks ago and the most recent videos were posted two days ago.
TikTok exploded with popularity in 2018 and is the third most installed app in the world. About 30 percent of the users are under the age of 18. Owned by Beijing-based Bytedance Ltd., the app has banned terrorist and criminal organizations from using its services.
Despite the Islamist tendency to decry Western culture and all it represents, Jihadis have eagerly embraced technology from other countries in the effort to spread its extremist agenda on Facebook, Twitter, Alphabet and YouTube.
