Social Media Team Up To Fight Against Terrorism Content
The world's four biggest disseminators of online content- Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Microsoft said that they are ready to do more self-policing to keep terrorist propaganda from spreading on the internet.
The companies are planning to create a shared database to track and monitor "violent terrorist imagery" and "terrorist recruitment videos or images" by helping each other more can help in reviewing content that might violate their specific policies efficiently. Companies will do this by logging hashes, digital identifiers that are unique to each piece of content. While adding hashes to the database each company will make its own decision about whether to remove the particular piece of content or not.
Moreover, the companies will not be automatically removed explicit content, but each of them will review the propaganda against their terms of services.
In January this year, White house officials discussed similar options with Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter representatives to prevent the spread of terror propaganda online.
So finally the tech companies decide to take a savior action to prevent the terrorist content by pooling their resources, after a mile long criticism for allowing their online platform to become a key recruitment tool for Islamic State of Iran and Levant.
The US and other government have tried for some time to counter extremist messaging online, but the platform themselves have come under fire for hosting the content. A Florida woman sued Twitter in January after her husband was killed in a terrorist attack, claiming that the social media sites are knowingly let ISIS use their platform to build their organization. However, the lawsuit was later dismissed.
Meanwhile, the social media giants have made similar efforts to boycott the harmful contents, Microsoft, Google, Twitter, and Facebook agreed to abide by a European code of conduct that required them to tackle hate speech and terrorist propaganda.
The database is expected to be up and running by early next year and more companies could potentially join the partnership.
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