Facebook to combat online extremism in Britain

LONDON: US social media giant Facebook launched a campaign in Britain on Friday to counter the spread of online extremism following warnings from Prime Minister Theresa May after four terror attacks in three months.

Facebook said it would seek to educate charities and other organisations on how to fight hate speech, in the wake of recent terror attacks in Belgium, Britain and France.

The Online Civil Courage Initiative (OCCI) will act as a forum for charities and other nonprofit organisations to share their experiences of extremism and develop “best practices” to tackle the issue, both on and offline.

There are already OCCI schemes in France and Germany.

Earlier this year, Group of Seven (G7) leaders had urged online giants like Facebook and Google to do more to curb extremist content online.

“The fight is moving from the battlefield to the Internet,” May said at the time. Partners in the new initiative include the Jo Cox Foundation, which was established in memory of the British member of parliament who was assassinated last year by a man with links to neo-Nazi organisations.

“There is no place for hate or violence on Facebook,” the company’s chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg said on Friday.

“We use technology like AI (artificial intelligence) to find and remove terrorist propaganda, and we have teams of counterterrorism experts and reviewers around the world working to keep extremist content off our platform.