Crack down on terrorist content

SOCIAL media giants Facebook, Google’s YouTube, Twitter and Microsoft said yesterday that they were forming a global working group to combine their efforts to remove terrorist content from their platforms. Responding to pressure from governments in Europe and the US after a spate of attacks by militants, the companies said that they would share technical solutions for removing terrorist content, commission research to inform their counter-speech efforts and work more with counter-terrorism experts. The Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism “will formalise and structure existing and future areas of collaboration between our companies and foster co-operation with smaller tech companies, civil society groups and academics, governments and supra-national bodies such as the EU and the UN,” the companies said in a joint statement. The move comes on the heels of last week’s call from European heads of state for tech firms to establish an industry forum and develop new technology and tools to improve the automatic detection and removal of extremist content. The political pressure on the companies has raised the prospect of new legislation at EU level, but so far only Germany has proposed a law fining social media networks up to €50 million (R721.44m) if they fail to remove hateful postings quickly. The lower house of the German parliament is expected to vote on the law this week. – Reuters