Google and Facebook at front end against online terrorism
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“There should be no place for terrorists to hide. We need to make sure that organisations like WhatsApp, and there are plenty of others like that, don’t provide a secret place for terrorists to communicate with each otherm,” Home Secretary Amber Rudd said following the Westminster Bridge attack.
More needs to be done in order to tackle online terrorism, a blog by Google’s General Counsel mentioned. Kent Walker, the man behind the blog, also indicated the steps which Google is already taking to monitor and prevent any distribution and redistribution of terrorist material. These steps include reviewing contents by thousands of employees, fully cooperating with governments and law enforcement agencies.
This new blog and urgency of doing more came out in the wake of recent terror attacks in UK, including the Manchester and the London Bridge attacks resulting in many lives lost and leaving many injured. This urgency of doing more also comes after Prime Minister Theresa May announced to plan a penalty and fine to be imposed on those tech companies who don’t deal with terrorism related material. Google and Facebook are the major contenders to be questioned on their role in preventing the online terrorist activities.
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Facebook in response revealed the use of Artificial Intelligence in identifying those people trying to create new accounts after their accounts were already been disabled due to some terrorist activities. However, unlike Twitter who banned 376,890 accounts for the promotion of terrorism, Facebook has never revealed how many accounts were suspended. Facebook also says that Facebook staff also continuously monitors the content and work closely with the law enforcement agencies all over the globe. Facebook also mentioned that it is monitoring the content shared on WhatsApp and Instagram, two of mobile apps owned by the company.
Just like Facebook, Google is also taking this problem seriously by adding a couple of steps to the previous measures. The first of which is to devote more resources and advanced technologies to solve this problem by using Google’s identification software to help with the identification of inappropriate videos and distinguish among propaganda and terrorist contents. Another step Google will take regards YouTube videos. Videos with religious content will not have a comments section and users will not be able to recommend them.
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