Zabiullah Mujahid, the Taliban’s spokesperson, has nearly 400,000 Twitter followers. Suhail Shaheen, another official has almost half a million followers, and was this week sharing on Twitter the results of the Taliban cabinet reshuffle. Shaheen has also been eager to show that the Taliban is a serious organization dedicated to governing Afghanistan properly: one of the first videos he posted in the wake of the American withdrawal was a video of a road being rebuilt. It was a dull clip, but the message was clear: ‘Time to roll up sleeves and build Afghanistan’, he wrote.

Through such posts, the Taliban is trying to use social media to seek legitimacy; its official messages, especially those in English, are moderate, comical even. One recent post showed Taliban fighters enjoying themselves eating ice creams in the baking Afghan heat.

Don’t be mistaken though: for the Taliban’s opponents, this is still an organization not to be laughed at. A glimpse of this can be seen elsewhere online with images showing what happens to those who fall foul of the Taliban regime not hard to find. Away from Twitter, on encrypted platforms, more fanatical content (and disinformation) is also being shared. Using social media, the Taliban are playing an altogether more unsavory game, as they seek to radicalize, recruit, and even inspire acts of terrorism.