Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube have teamed up to announce the formation of the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism with a stated aim of making their hosted consumer services hostile to terrorists and violent extremists. In a joint statement the companies said they have already taken a hard line against terrorist or violent extremist content and have developed appropriate policies and removal practices. “We believe that by working together, sharing the best technological and operational elements of our individual efforts, we can have a greater impact on the threat of terrorist content online,” they said.
The new forum intends to build on initiatives including the EU Internet Forum and the Shared Industry Hash Database; discussions with the UK and other governments; and the conclusions of the recent G7 and European Council meetings. It will formalise and structure existing and future areas of collaboration between the companies and foster cooperation with smaller tech companies, civil society groups and academics, governments and supra-national bodies such as the EU and the UN.
The tech firms added that the focus of the collaboration would be on technological solutions, research and partnerships with governments and civic groups. They intend to implement new content detection and classification techniques using machine learning and define standard transparency reporting methods for terrorist content removals. They have also partnered with the UN Security Council Counter-Terrorism Executive Directorate (UN CTED) and the ICT4Peace Initiative to establish a broad knowledge-sharing network to engage with smaller companies, develop best practices and set up robust counterspeech initiatives.
