Anonymous is rickrolling ISIS as part of its plan to defeat terrorism

Anonymous is, by most accounts, losing its self-declared war onISIS and in spectacularfashion, too.

Both the FBI and Twitter have now discreditedclaims made by members of the hacktivist collective last week that #OpParis had wiped out20,000 ISIS-affiliatedTwitter accounts.

A spokesperson for Twitter calledthelists of accounts published by Anonymous "wildly inaccurate" and"full of academics and journalists" who are not, in fact, ISIS supporters.

After conducting its own review,Ars Technicafound thatmostof the 4,000Twitter accountsin onePastebin listhadn't posted messages sympathetic to ISIS at all some accounts weretrolling the militant group, some belong to Palestinians, andsome were simplywritten in Arabic.

To put it more nicely than some have, the self-declared war is "falling apart," though not necessarily at the hands of Anonymousas a whole. Some arms of the loosely organized collective are, once again, distancing themselves from the inaccuraciespublished by others.

Despite all of the criticism Anonymous is attracting with its "war," one particular battle is winning the group some praise.

Today, as promised, members of theISIS-related Anonymousoperations #OpParis and #OpISIS aremass-rickrollinghashtags associated with the militant group.

Internet culture phenomenon

The rickrollis a classic bait-and-switch meme dating back to at least 2007,when it emerged on 4Chan as a practical jokein which someone promises something sensational in a link that actually leads to themusic video for Rick Astley's 1987 hit song Never Gonna Give You Up.

It has since becomean internet culture phenomenon, and has beenused for comedic effect over the yearsby the White House, the New York Mets,Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and more.

Just after 3 a.m. ET Tuesday morning, the main #OpParis Twitter account released the first of its rickrollingtargets: The hashtag#SupportISIS.

About 70 operatives have now tweeted out the link to Astley's video on the #SupportISIS hashtag, many of them multiple times, and just over 80 more have used#RickrollDaeshtoshare the video.

In fact, almost everything posted to thesehashtags onNov. 24 contained a link toNever Gonna Give You Upas of Tuesday afternoon.

The idea behind spamming a hashtag is to flood it with so many junk tweetsthat it becomes virtually impossible for anyoneto communicate actual messages using it.

Members of ISIS have actually used this strategy in the past to spreadpropaganda for the group onsocial media, and pranksters have also been known to delight in "hijacking" thehashtags promoted bybrands on Twitter.

Hashtag spamming can be a successful way to derail an online community but only whenan active hashtag is being spammed.

Only about 40 tweets had been posted to the #SupportISIS hashtag this year before it was targeted by Anonymous, and many of those tweets were jokes, or anti-ISIS in nature.

Still, the online masses seem to love the idea of "rickrolling" ISIS, regardless of how effective the campaign's execution has been.

The @OpParisOfficial account stated on Twitter Tuesday morning that it would be releasing a new hashtag to spam each night.

According to a post on the AnonHq website, this rickrolling campaign is the hacking collective's "most powerful weapon yet."