Gore, Propaganda, and Radicalization Overlap in Extremely Accessible Sites, Researchers Find

Counterterrorism agencies are grappling with a new and younger generation of attackers and extremists that is being largely radicalized online, including by the use of ultraviolent content offered on so-called gore sites.

These websites enable the hosting and sharing of illegal videos, primarily featuring extreme violence and graphic content. That includes content produced by terrorist entities, especially the Islamic State (IS), far-right extremist groups, and violent misogynists.

Searches for terrorist material on 24 gore-related websites found more than 12,000 examples, including graphic and nongraphic violent propaganda from IS and livestreams of racism-motivated mass shootings, according to a research report published by online extremism research network VOX-Pol last month, Gore and Violent Extremism: An Explorative Analysis of the Use of Gore Websites for Hosting and Sharing Extremist and Terrorist Content. IS-produced content features a blend of propaganda and gory content, aiming to capture attention and radicalize viewers.

Meanwhile, online violent misogyny content is also easily accessible on these platforms. Incel forums directed users to gore websites where they could purchase folders of videos of women being murdered, including beheadings, the report said.

Recent outbreaks of global violence—including the war in Ukraine, the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel, and the invasion of Gaza—provided new content for gore sites, likely driving a new spike in traffic. Between March 2020 and March 2024, the two most popular gore-related sites increased their average monthly UK visits by at least 226 percent, “seemingly driven by footage from the Israel–Hamas conflict,” the report said.

Nihilism and gore content intersect as well.

“Despite limited data-led research to support a causal relationship between nihilism and violent radicalization, there are recent cases of real-world violence in which both nihilism and gore content have featured in the digital footprint of violent extremist offenders,” the VOX-Pol report said. “A shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, in July 2022 was carried out by a suspect whose digital history evidenced an immersion in nihilistic and gore-focused online communities. Similarly, the perpetrator of a militant accelerationist-inspired attack in Eskisehir, Turkey, in August 2024 had engaged with graphic and violent videos on Vidlii, a shock website, including a murder video created by Ukrainian serial killers, the Dnepropetrovsk maniacs. More recently, an online alias linked to the 15-year-old perpetrator of a school shooting in Madison, Wisconsin, in December 2024 had been an active user of a prominent gore website, including posting comments on several videos depicting suicide. Nihilism has also been shown by Marc-Andre Argentino to be a prominent feature of the ideologies of two militant accelerationist organizations, Maniac Murder Cult (M.K.Y.) and the 764 Network, both of which have encouraged members to film themselves committing acts of violence and to share the footage within extremist communities.”

Two recent school shootings in the United States highlight the growing—and often misunderstood—trend of nonideological terrorism. https://t.co/LMrpKZEJdW

— Security Management (@SecMgmtMag) March 10, 2025

The sites are easy to find (a quick Google search for research on the topic provided multiple direct links to sites claiming to offer many videos of people dying or being harmed), and half of the sites assessed by VOX-Pol had no public policy on prohibited content. Of the few sites that did ban some content, only six prohibited child sexual abuse material and five referenced “illegal content” more broadly. None mentioned terrorism content.

All 24 sites analyzed were accessible via the surface Web (not the Dark or Deep Web, which require some prior knowledge to navigate), requiring no user information to view content, presenting violent and often illegal content directly on the homepage, and not featuring a paywall. Only four of the sites requested users to confirm their age, but with no verification. 

Two of the sites had mirror websites, which could increase their resilience to takedown actions from hosting providers or law enforcement, the report said.

Content from the sites can be downloaded, shared, and reuploaded to more mainstream social media spaces and messaging platforms, and it is frequently shared in extreme right-wing spaces online, the report said.

Traffic to these 24 gore sites hit an average of 1 million combined total visits per month from users in the UK, primarily from young men.

“As online services, the websites provide no protections for children who visit them or click on their links, and actively include functions designed to better spread their graphic violent content across social media and messaging platforms,” the report said. “Their audience consists mostly of men and the websites demonstrate a proximity to extreme pornography that raises cross-harm concerns about the public online spaces accessible to young men and boys in the UK and globally.”

Exposure to this material can have serious ramifications. Axel Rudakubana, who murdered three children at a dance class in Southport, UK, watched videos of murder and genocide online in the lead-up to his attack, according to UK law enforcement.

“I have been deeply disturbed at the number of cases involving teenagers drawn into extremism, serious violence and terrorism—including Islamist extremism, far right extremism, mixed and confused ideology, and obsession with violence and gore,” said UK Home Secretary Yvette Cooper in a January 2025 speech. “There has been a threefold increase in under-18s investigated for involvement in terrorism in just three years.”

The problem stretches beyond the UK. U.S. mass shooters—including school shooters in Nashville, Tennessee, and Madison, Wisconsin—had gore-related sites as part of their manifestos or digital footprints, the VOX-Pol report said.

France’s national antiterrorism prosecutor, Olivier Christen, noted that his unit handled terror-related preliminary charges to just two minors in 2022, but the number leapt to 15 in 2023 and 19 in 2024.

Some are “really very, very young, around 15 years old, which was something that was almost unheard of no more than two years ago,” Christen said in an interview with the Associated Press. It “demonstrates the strong effectiveness of the propaganda disseminated by terrorist organizations, which are quite good at targeting this age group.”

France’s domestic security agency said 70 percent of suspects detained for involvement in alleged terror plots are under the age of 21. In Belgium, almost a third of suspects detained for plotting attacks from 2022 to 2024 were minors, including one who was only 13 years old.

One 12-year-old boy detained in France and convicted of terror-related charges in August 2024 had 1,739 jihadi videos on his phone and computer, the AP reported. The videos included scenes of decapitation and shootings. His descent into radicalization started with online searches about Islam, but automated algorithms and the boy’s curiosity led him to encrypted chats and ultraviolent IS propaganda.

“These attacks occurred at a time of growing recognition, certainly in the UK and U.S., that young people and children are exposed to harmful, violent and potentially radicalising content and that such content goes beyond ‘traditional’ understanding of ideological extremism,” VOX-Pol said. “In 2024, one in five people arrested as terrorist suspects in the UK were under 18, and an Ofcom study on access to violent content reported that ‘all children who took part in the research came across violent content online’ and described it as an ‘unavoidable’ part of their online experience.”