TECH TAKES AIM AT ONLINE PROPAGANDA

Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube are joining forces to more quickly identify the worst terrorist propaganda and prevent it from spreading online.

The new program announced Monday would create a database of unique digital “fingerprints” to help automatically identify videos or images the companies could remove.

The move by the technology companies, which is expected to begin in early 2017, aims to assuage government concerns — and derail proposed new federal legislation — over social media content that is seen as increasingly driving terrorist recruitment and radicalization, while also balancing free-speech issues.

Technical details were being worked out, but Microsoft pioneered similar technology to detect, report and remove child pornography through such a database in 2009.

Under the new partnership, the companies promised to share among themselves “the most extreme and egregious terrorist images and videos we have removed from our services — content most likely to violate all our respective companies’ content policies,” according to a joint announcement Monday evening. The Associated Press