Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and Google's YouTube have agreed to work together to share information on terrorism posted on their social networks. The four companies will create a shared industry database of "hashes", or unique digital "fingerprints", for violent terrorist imagery or terrorist recruitment videos or images that they have removed from their services. These will be shared with the other companies to help identify potential terrorist content on other sites and have it removed.
The content to be shared initially includes hashes of the "most extreme and egregious terrorist images and videos" removed from their services, which have most likely violated all of their respective content policies. No personally identifiable information will be shared, and the companies said they remain committed to protecting their users' privacy. Matching content will not be automatically removed, and each company will continue to apply its own policies on what type of content to remove.
Other companies may be added to the joint effort in future.
