Pleased to have had the opportunity to contribute to this research with Human Digital and @vox-pol.bsky.social. The ongoing proliferation of illegal content on gore sites is undermining broader efforts to counter terrorism and other harms online. Among the key findings of the research:

2/ There is a general lack of safety mechanisms on these sites, and illegal content on them can easily be discovered via mainstream search engines

3/ Many of the sites enable straightforward downloads of illegal content, feeding its proliferation across social media and the rest of the mainstream internet

4/ Violent misogynists, including incels, are viewing content depicting violence against women on gore sites. A popular incel forum has 2,000+ posts directing users to gore-related websites, some of which advertised purchasable folders of videos of women being murdered.

5/ In the UK alone, the most visited gore-related websites receive up to 334,000 visits per month

/6 Out of curiosity and given the attention in the UK right now on age verification, I accessed 15 gore sites yesterday from my own list, from a UK IP address. Aside from some having a tick box confirming you are 18, none of them had any form of age verification in place.