Google's Plan to Use Ads to Sway ISIS Recruits | WIRED BizCon

One of the few people who's more detested

than a fake news guy,

is a jihadi, right?

Like, who in the world is more easy to vilify

than somebody who wants to go and be a suicide bomber?

And that was kind of the very controversial first step

for us as we were thinking about

how can we use technology to challenge radicalization

is we think we should go and speak to people

who have trained as suicide bombers

to understand how they think.

So we went last year, and devoted a research trip to Iraq

where we spoke to defectors.

And, you know, ISIS, it's not like a revolving door,

you can come and go as you please.

Once you go, you can't leave there.

It's punishable by death

if you even talk about trying to leave.

So we were speaking to people who'd left home,

traveled to the Caliphate to train

to be suicide bombers, among other roles that ISIS needed,

and then they'd risked their lives to leave.

And they were talking about what that disillusionment was.

So why had they gone?

They were going to fight for the rights of Muslims.

It was really like this freedom narrative

that they bought into.

And then they arrive in Raqqa, in Syria,

which is the capital of the Caliphate,

and immediately they have two things confiscated:

their passport, and their mobile phone.

So the symbols of your physical and digital freedom

immediately are confiscated.

And then you realize that you can't walk, you can't talk,

you're not free to think what you want.

And I'm sitting in front, in northern Iraq,

I'm sitting in front of this 20 year-old boy

who's so frail and barely has a few pieces of facial hair.

He's kind of trembling.

And this is the way that he described to me

what it was like to arrive in Syria.

He said, It was like in Tom and Jerry,

when Tom swallowed the key.

And firstly, that's so vivid.

The cartoon cat and the big key down the throat.

And you're like, how am I going to get out of here?

And secondly, this is a guy who none of us

would really think twice about saying is evil.

This is how he's describing the bad decision he made.

So I say to him, Well, if you know everything you know now,

everything you saw there in terms of the suffering,

the starving, the brutality, the corruption.

If you knew everything that you know now,

before you made the decision to leave,

would you still have gone?

And he said, Yes.

And I said, What?

And he said, Well at the point that I was leaving,

I wasn't accepting any new information.

And it turns out that everyone I've interviewed,

and we've also spoken to women, girls as young as 13.

They all say that at the time that they decided to go,

it was too late to reach them.

Then you say, Well, what about

if you knew everything you know now

six months before you made the decision to leave?

Would that have changed your mind?

And they say, Yes.

At that point, I was open ... I was evaluating information,

and I was open to it.

So our takeaway is,

okay, so this is an access to information problem.

So it makes sense for us as a technology company

to intervene.

At the point that they're buying their ticket

to go to Istanbul and make their journey is too late,

we need to reach them when they're sympathetic,

but they're not yet sold.

So then the next step was,

well, what is it exactly that they're sold on?

And I think that a lot of the other initiatives out there

to reach these people basically say,

Don't join ISIS.

Click on this online link to know more

about not joining ISIS.

Well, if I'm sympathetic, that's not really going to ...

I kind of liken it to showing smokers

on the side of a cigarette packet, like your lungs.

I've been a smoker.

I did not look at that.

That's not how I stopped smoking.

But I can imagine for non-smokers, it's like,

of course, show them their lungs.

[Interviewer] It's terrible.

[Yasmin Green] It's horrible.

Well, I think that people who don't subscribe to ISIS

think it's so horrible.

Just show them some beheadings

and anyone who's not evil will decide not to go.

It's mostly good people making bad decisions,

who join violent and extremist groups.

And they have valid questions.

The recruiters raise valid questions

to which they provide valid answers.

So, religious legitimacy, effective governance,

military prowess.

So the job was, let's respect that these people,

they're not evil and they're buying into something.

Let's use the power of online targeted advertising,

which makes companies like ours

tens of billions of dollars every quarter,

to reach them.

To single them out.

The people who are sympathetic, but not yet sold.

And let's give them alternative answers

to the questions that they have

that could lead them into joining.