American IT companies have created Internet forum to counteract terrorism

The Internet companies Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube announced the creation of a global Internet forum to counteract terrorism, in which partners will work together to create and improve technical means to identify propaganda of terrorism and extremism on the Internet, writes the newspaper Kommersant .

Also, companies will engage in technical assistance in this area for other Internet companies and will inform the authorities of different countries about effective ways to combat terrorist ideas on the Internet. Finally, they plan to cooperate with public organizations and the scientific community. Coordination of actions will be carried out not only between the participants in the forum, but also with the UN Office to counteract extremism and terrorism. At the same time, the European Commission allocated 10 million euros to the forum.

As noted in a joint statement by Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube, "the spread of terrorism and extremism is an urgent global problem and a challenge to all of us."

The counter-terrorist forum was the result of the association of the Internet forum of the European Union (EU), which was created in 2015 in order to search for the best ways to identify and eliminate terrorist propaganda and incite hatred on the Internet and a joint hash information base, the creation of which the IT companies were announced last year.

Recall that earlier the EU authorities have repeatedly accused American technological companies of insufficient fight against extremist content. For example, in December 2016, the European Commission demanded that Facebook, Microsoft and other companies actively fight the Content hatred. As noted in the regulator’s statement, otherwise legislative acts will be adopted in the EU, which the companies will be able to compel the companies more carefully to fulfill the obligations.

It should be noted that last week Google announced a number of measures aimed at combating the spread of extremist videos on the YouTube video hosting video hosting. In particular, we are talking about improving algorithms for automatic recognition and removal of extremist videos, as well as more active involvement of independent experts for the analysis of videos marked by users of the service.