Julia Ebner's undercover years lead to a case for "bridging algorithms"
The Oxford extremism researcher tells TEDxBerlin that outrage-driven feeds are a choice, and that AI could be built to cool hostility instead.
TEDx Talks
Story of Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 59,910 views a day, 127 times a normal first day on this channel (470).
Extremists are using AI to radicalize us—can we fight back? | Julia Ebner | TEDxBerlin
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- 0:11Ebner describes years undercover in jihadist, neo-Nazi and incel groups to study the psychology of radicalization.
- 1:14Extremist groups act like startups, adopting social bots and encrypted messaging early.
- 3:22Moderating single posts fails, she argues, because recommendation algorithms favor outrage.
- 4:23Three shared factors: personal grievance, identity fused with an in-group, and a perceived existential threat.
- 7:42AI research flags early warning words: kinship terms, dehumanization, threat perception and justifications of violence.
- 8:58Her answer: "bridging algorithms" that link people with differing views and use AI to de-escalate.
"Throughout much of my twenties, I lived a double life," Julia Ebner says at the start of her TEDxBerlin talk. That double life was spent undercover inside jihadist, neo-Nazi and incel groups, studying how ordinary people get pulled in. Ebner leads the Violent Extremism Lab at the University of Oxford and is the author of The Rage, Going Dark and Going Mainstream. Here she turns those years toward one question: can the technology that speeds up radicalization also help slow it down?
TEDx Talks posts new talks almost daily from independent events around the world. The same day brought Göttingen, Reus, Mumbai and Adana. Most of those talks open with a few hundred views. Ebner's passed 40,000 in its first eleven hours, and its comment section had already outgrown a typical full first day.
"One of the things I learned early on was that extremists operate a bit like startups," she says. Her examples: early adoption of social bots and encrypted messaging, and her meeting in 2017 with leaders of Generation Identity, who staged stunts to feed their online campaigns. Deleting single posts misses the point, she argues, when recommendation systems reward outrage.
Across very different movements she sees the same three ingredients: a personal grievance, an identity fused with an in-group, and the sense that the group faces an existential threat. Generative chatbots, deepfakes and automated disinformation raise the stakes. "What shocked me was not just the content, but the scale and the speed," she says.
The answer the title promises comes in the last few minutes. Her team uses AI to spot early warning signs in language, such as kinship words, dehumanization and justifications for violence. She also proposes "bridging algorithms" that connect people with different views. "But algorithms are not a law of nature. They're a design choice."
Viewers have picked up that thread. The most liked comment asks whether social media algorithms need to change. Another doubts that the helpful kind of AI will ever be funded like the harmful kind. Ebner's own closing line for what AI could be: "A bridge, not a weapon."
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- Channel
- TEDx Talks
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- Channel views, last 7 days
- 12,122,323
- Channel views, pace per day
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- Video published
- October 13, 2026
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- Video views, pace per day
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The numbers
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💡 Test your knowledge
Which of these books was written by Julia Ebner?
Going Dark is one of Ebner's books, alongside The Rage and Going Mainstream. The others are by Eli Pariser, Cathy O'Neil and Nicholas Carr.