In early May, as US and NATO forces began their final withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Taliban stepped up a military offensive against the Afghan National Security Forces.
But they also did something much less common for this group's history during the country's wartime conflict - they launched a massive follow-up campaign on social media.
A network of social media accounts highlighted the alleged failures of the government in Kabul while extolling the Taliban's achievements.
The tweets boasted the group's recent victories - sometimes prematurely - and spawned several hashtags, including #kabulregimecrimes (linked to tweets accusing the Afghan government of war crimes); #westandwithTaliban (attempt to awaken support among the people) and #ﻧَﺼْﺮٌ_ﻣٌِﻦَ_اللهِ_ﻭَﻓَﺘْﺢٌ_ﻗَﺮِﻳﺐٌ (help from God and victory are near).
The first hashtag managed to trend in Afghanistan.
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In response, then-Afghan Vice President Amrullah Saleh warned forces and the public not to fall for false claims of Taliban victories on social media and urged people to avoid sharing details of military operations that could compromise security.
The coordination suggested that the Taliban have abandoned the fierce opposition to modern information technology and media that was once associated with them and have built a social media apparatus to amplify their message.
When the Taliban first came to power in Afghanistan in 1996, they banned the Internet and confiscated or destroyed televisions, cameras and video tapes.
The official website of the Islamic Emirates Taliban, "Al-Emarah", launched in 2005, now publishes content in five languages - English, Arabic, Pashto, Dari and Urdu.
The audio, video and written content is overseen by the Islamic Emirates of Afghanistan (IEA) culture commission, headed by their spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid.
Zabihullah Mujahid's first Twitter account was shut down by this company, but his new account - active since 2017 - has more than 371.000 followers.
Working under him is a dedicated team of volunteers who promote the Taliban ideology on the Internet.
The alleged head of this group - practically the social media director of the IEA - is Kvari Said Kosti.
Kosti told the BBC that the team has separate groups dealing with Twitter - which works to get Taliban-related hashtags trending - as well as spreading messages on Vocap and Facebook.
"Our enemies have television, radio, verified accounts on social networks, and we have none of that, and yet we fought them on Twitter and Facebook and defeated them," says Kosti.
His job, he says, is to take people who joined the Taliban because of their ideology and "get them on social media so they can spread our message."
There are only 8,6 million Internet users in Afghanistan, and the lack of network coverage and available data remains a key challenge.
The IEA's social media team pays 1.000 afghanis ($11,51) a month for data packages to team members "who wage their war online," Kosti says.
He boasted that the IEA "has four fully equipped multimedia studios that are used to create audio and video content and digital branding."
The result is high-quality propaganda videos glorifying Taliban fighters and their fight against foreign and national forces, widely available on their YouTube channel and Al-Emarah website.
The group posts freely on Twitter and YouTube, but Facebook has labeled the Taliban a "dangerous organization" and frequently removes accounts and pages associated with them.
Facebook has announced that it will continue to ban Taliban content on its platforms.
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Kosti tells the BBC that the Taliban are finding it difficult to maintain their presence on Facebook and are instead focusing on Twitter.
Although the US State Department has designated the Haqqani Network as an international terrorist group, its leader Anas Haqqani and many of the group's members have Twitter accounts with thousands of followers.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a member of the Taliban's social media team told the BBC that the team decided to use Twitter to its fullest to promote an article that Sirajuddin Haqqani, the Taliban's deputy leader, wrote specifically for the New York Times in February 2020. .
Most of the active Taliban accounts on Twitter were opened after that.
"Most Afghans do not know English, but the leaders of the regime in Kabul actively communicated in English on Twitter - because their audience was not Afghans but the international community," he says.
"The Taliban wanted to counter their propaganda and that's why we focused on Twitter."
He says team members, some of whom have tens of thousands of followers, have been given specific instructions "not to comment on foreign policy issues of neighboring countries that could damage our relations with them."
In the past, the Taliban have been known to be extremely secretive about the identity of their leaders and fighters.
So much so that there is hardly any clearer picture of the founder of the group Mullah Omer.
Today, in an attempt to gain international legitimacy, their leadership not only appears in the media, but is also significantly promoted on social networks.
When the group's previously secretive spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, appeared at a press conference shortly after the fall of Kabul, the profile pictures of many Taliban accounts on Twitter changed to his picture.
In contrast, many Afghan citizens who have worked for international forces, organizations and media, and others who have criticized the Taliban on social media, are now shutting down their accounts, fearing that the information could be used to track them down.
Human rights organizations Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch say they have already received reports of Taliban fighters seeking out, and allegedly killing, people in retaliation.
Facebook has introduced a one-click tool for people in Afghanistan to quickly lock their account, preventing anyone who isn't already their friend from seeing their details.
The site also announced that it has temporarily removed the ability for accounts in Afghanistan to view and search their "friends" list.
The question is whether the Taliban have changed and renounced the ferocity that was associated with them.
Many in Afghanistan and around the world do not believe their promises that they have changed.
But they seem to have realized that some of the technology they once rejected can help them in their mission to influence opinion on the global stage.
"Social media is a powerful tool for changing public perception," says a member of the social media team.
"We want to change people's perception of the Taliban."
Watch a video about women in Afghanistan under Taliban rule
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