‘The Rise and Fall of Terrorgram’ Explores the Danger of Online Extremism

One recurring concern about modern politics involves the danger that people might act on what’s seen as inflammatory rhetoric, from threatening judges and legislators to vandalizing Tesla dealerships. The understandable fear is that a segment of the audience, however small, might be pushed to violent action by otherwise protected speech.

The latest collaboration of PBS’ “Frontline” and the investigative group ProPublica, “The Rise and Fall of Terrorgram,” poses an even more unsettling question, examining the rise of a global movement specifically intended, as correspondent A.C. Thompson explains, to leverage tech platforms to “encourage and inspire other people to go out and commit acts of terrorism.”

Illustrating “Frontline’s” deep-dive reporting that’s in relatively short supply elsewhere as President Trump’s Federal Communications Commission probes PBS funding, the 90-minute documentary cites multiple examples of (usually) young men who acted after prodding from white-supremacist propaganda. The lethal consequences of that have manifested themselves in dozens of actions under the alleged guidance of what was known as the Terrorgram Collective.

The information advanced by white supremacists and anonymous sources gradually migrated from 4Chan and 8Chan to Telegram, eventually leading to the arrest of two Americans, Dallas Humber and Matthew Allison, in September 2024. The pair have been accused of using the app to solicit the murder of government officials, among other charges, while providing tactical advice on how to carry out terrorist acts.

Other activities included turning mass-murderer manifestos into audiobooks.

As Thompson notes, the way these platforms have been used raises questions about content moderation in the darkest corners of social media, and how to deal with attempts to not just disseminate extremist ideas but to radicalize consumers of that information and motivate them to act.

From that perspective, “The Rise and Fall of Terrorgram” goes well beyond the near-daily debates about intemperate remarks by politicians and other public figures, while asking a more pointed question of tech platforms that have been wary of opening themselves to charges of censoring content.

In the documentary, ProPublica journalist James Bandler says the Terrorgram story illustrates that there are “consequences to unfettered free speech, to having influencers out there advocating violence or mass murder.”

For tech platforms, it also zeroes in on what Thompson — who has done a series of documentaries on the evolution of online hate — calls “the extreme end of all this: What do you do as a company when you have people on your platform saying, ‘Let’s go kill folks.’”

Yet if the logic of placing restrictions on such postings seems as obvious as other familiar limitations on free speech — such as not being able to yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater — “The Rise and Fall of Terrorgram” offers the unsettling appraisal that such safeguards have yet to fully adapt to the demands and dangers of the digital age. And as sociologist Pete Simi states in the documentary, shutting down one of these networks hasn’t stopped them from cropping up again, under new names, and via new platforms.

“The Rise and Fall of Terrorgram” premieres March 25 at 10 p.m. ET on PBS stations.

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