Isis supporters have set up their own social network, Khelafabook, though the site looked amateur and has broken since it was discovered last night.
The site claimed to be set up to allow Isis and its supporters to communicate each other in the face of bans from social networks like Twitter and Facebook. Twitter especially has become a battleground for propaganda — with the network acting to shut down many of the 90,000 accounts the group is thought to have set up, but not being able to stop the spread of Isis messages entirely.
Khelafabook had the appearance of a normal social network, but had a photograph of the world with Isis logos posted over its countries as its background. It appeared to have been built on a platform called SocialKit, which anyone can download and use to make social networks of their own.
The site appears to have been established to get round such bans. It was established by a man in the Iraqi city of Mosul — though he has registered his country as Islamic State — but is hosted in Egypt.
It looks very amateur — it has blank pages for its privacy policy and other important sites, and did not appear to have picked up many users before it was taken down. The address seems to have been bought from web page firm GoDaddy.
Though the site has already gone down, many have said that it would be difficult for the US or other governments to have it shut down if it were to come back up. While the site is made expressly for those that support Isis, it is unclear whether it is being used as a planning tool or simply a social network based around the group — in which case officials would probably have little ability to ask for it to be taken down.
The name, Khilafah, means caliphate in Arabic.
