Social media giants join hands to scrub extremist content
BRUSSELS // 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 United States after a spate of militant attacks, the companies said they would share technical solutions for removing terrorist content, commission research to inform their counter- speech efforts, and work more with counterterrorism experts. The Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism “will formalise and structure existing and future areas of collaboration between our companies and foster cooperation with smaller tech companies, civil society groups and academics, governments and supranational bodies such as the European Union and the United Nations”, the companies said.
Last week, European heads of state urged technology 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 (Dh205m) if they fail to remove hateful and extremist postings quickly.
The lower house of the German parliament is expected to vote on the law this week.
The companies will seek to improve technical work such as a database created in December to share unique digital fingerprints they automatically assign to videos or photos of extremist content.
They will also exchange best practices on content detection techniques using machine learning and define “standard transparency reporting methods for terrorist content removals”. This month, Facebook opened up about its efforts to remove terrorism content in response to criticism from politicians that technology giants were not doing enough to stop militant groups from using their platforms for propaganda and recruiting.