A look at 764, an online group the FBI labeled a domestic terrorist organization for manipulating teen girls into sharing sexual material and cutting themselves
764 is a global group of online sadists pushing kids to harm themselves, their pets and their families. The FBI calls it a new wave of terrorism.LinkedIn:Anthony C.,Robert Friedman, andAllizandra Herberhold, LMSWLinkedIn:Anthony C.:Classifying 764 members as terrorists would subject them to more serious charges. So prosecutors and FBI agents pulled together messages from group chats that mentioned political or extremist views. …Robert Friedman:Sharing a gift link to a disturbing new story by m
Context & Ripple Effects
Related reporting has traced 764’s activity across Discord and Telegram, describing coercion, blackmail and grooming of vulnerable teens, alongside a broader network of violent online predators. It also documented platform removals and the group’s use of financial-crime techniques such as SIM swapping in sextortion.
The FBI’s terrorism framing matters because investigators are reportedly tying chat evidence of political or extremist views to conduct previously covered primarily as online exploitation and harassment. That shifts the case from platform moderation and individual criminal prosecutions toward a national-security enforcement lens.
First-order effects
- FBI agents and prosecutors can pursue cases involving 764 with a terrorism-focused theory, using the group’s extremist communications alongside evidence of coercion and self-harm abuse.
- Members and alleged associates face a potentially more serious enforcement posture, while victims’ cases may be treated as evidence of an organized threat rather than isolated online incidents.
Second-order effects
- Discord, Telegram and comparable services face greater pressure to preserve evidence, disrupt recruitment and respond faster to networks that combine child exploitation with extremist material.
- Investigations will increasingly need capabilities spanning child-safety abuse, account takeover techniques such as SIM swapping, and extremist-network analysis, pulling telecom and platform-security teams into the response.
Third-order effects
- If this approach survives legal scrutiny, it could broaden how authorities classify digitally native abuse networks whose violence is coordinated online and accompanied by ideological content.
- The harder policy question will be separating organized terror-linked conduct from heinous but non-ideological online abuse; that boundary will shape future charging practice and platform obligations.
The trend: This is part of a broader shift toward treating certain cross-platform child-exploitation networks as hybrid public-safety and national-security threats rather than solely content-moderation or cybercrime problems.