Europol identified 4340 URLs for removal in a multi-week effort against online material connected to The Com, a loosely structured collection of nihilistic violent extremist networks.

Officials from nine nations including Belgium, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden joined the Referral Action Days coordinated by Europol between June and July 2026.

The coordinated campaign supports the European Commission's ProtectEU counterterrorism strategy and was arranged by Europol's EU Internet Referral Unit along with Spain's CITCO to interrupt The Com's digital presence, reduce the spread of nihilistic violent extremism material, and develop fresh investigative leads.

Europol noted that The Com material uses coded terms and emojis that adults often find difficult to interpret, promoting messages that urge self-harm and the sexual exploitation of minors. The referenced material features violent videos and images showing self-harm, suicide, child sexual abuse material, animal cruelty, and violent attacks.

Additional content covers videos of violent street attacks known as manhunt or arson incidents. The Com also creates manuals on grooming, murder, improvised explosives, and ideological views to guide members in carrying out violent acts, grooming and extorting minors, or performing doxing and swatting.

The effort continues Project Compass, a yearlong initiative started in January 2025 under Europol's European Counter Terrorism Centre that involves law enforcement from 28 countries.

As previously reported, the wider project has led to 30 arrests and the identification of 179 suspects linked to The Com along with 62 victims.

In January 2025 Europol issued a notice about the growth of online cult communities that specifically target young people.

What is The Com?

Europol characterizes The Com as a decentralized network without a single ideology, though certain factions follow violent right-wing extremist and accelerationist ideas.

The Com-linked groups recruit and groom victims on social media, messaging services, and gaming platforms, pressuring them into self-harm, violence, and the creation of child sexual abuse material often through extortion.

They spread propaganda on open platforms to draw in young people and direct potential members and victims into private forums and chat rooms where radicalization and victimization take place. Victims are typically forced to stay under the perpetrators' control through sextortion, Europol stated.

According to Europol, The Com consists of several subgroups such as Offline Com which encourages property damage, harm to others, and terrorism acts, Cyber Com which carries out network intrusions and ransomware operations, Sextortion Com which pressures minors into sex crimes and promotes self-harm and suicide, and 764 which emerged in 2021 and is known for grooming young people to produce explicit content later used for blackmail or shared among members.

Two alleged 764 leaders, 20-year-old Prasan Nepal and 21-year-old Leonidas Varagiannis, were detained in April 2025 and now face life sentences for running an international child exploitation network.

The Com has also been connected to major ransomware incidents including the Las Vegas casino breaches in September 2023 and attacks on Marks and Spencer, Co-op, and Harrods in April 2025.