Facebook, Twitter pledge to continue anti-terror efforts
Facebook and Twitter vowed to continue policing their networks for terrorist elements after British Prime Minister Theresa May’s call for tougher Internet regulation in the wake of recent terror attacks in London.
May called for international collaboration to “regulate cyberspace to prevent the spread of extremist and terrorism planning.”
Her comments came after Saturday night’s attack that began on London Bridge with attackers using a van to ram pedestrians before stabbing several people in a market. Seven people were killed with many more injured. The Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, claimed responsibility for the attack.
“We cannot allow this ideology the safe space it needs to breed,” May said.
Facebook, Twitter and Google’s YouTube have come under growing pressure from British officials and lawmakers who have accused the Silicon Valley companies of doing too little to combat terrorists and extremist content on their networks. They want these companies to take more responsibility for the content that appears on their networks and to provide information to authorities that could help them foil or investigate attacks.
In March, U.K. home secretary Amber Rudd told Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Twitter that they must quickly remove terrorist propaganda and figure out how to stop it from appearing on their platforms in the first place.
The meeting took place after Khalid Masood hit pedestrians with his vehicle on March 22 on Westminster Bridge, killing three, and then jumped out and stabbed and killed a police officer outside the Parliament building. Masood, who was shot and killed by police, had used WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook, shortly before the attack.
At the time, the four tech companies said they would work together to create a forum to “accelerate and strengthen” efforts to block access to terrorist propaganda. The goal: to create better tools to identify and remove terrorist propaganda and share those methods with smaller companies. Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter also said they would continue to promote counter narratives to terrorist propaganda.
In December 2016, Facebook joined Microsoft, Twitter and Google’s YouTube in creating a database to help prevent the spread of terrorist content including videos and images online.
In a series of tweets Sunday, Peter Neumann, director of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence at King ’s College London, agreed “big social media platforms have cracked down on jihadist accounts, with (the) result that ... most jihadists are now using end-to-end encrypted messenger platforms e.g. Telegram. Moreover, few people (are) radicalized exclusively online. Blaming social media platforms is politically convenient but intellectually lazy.”