Microsoft, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter announced the creation of the so-called Global Internet Forum to Combat Terrorism, a new alliance aimed at eliminating content that supports terrorism and violent extremism.
The four tech giants will collaborate on technologies that will help detect terrorist material online, while removing links to content labeled as extremism and hate on the internet.
The alliance is expected to expand with additional members in the coming months and years, and the four companies say they will also work with other parties, including governments and non-governmental organizations.
“The spread of terrorism and violent extremism is a pressing global problem and a critical challenge for all of us. We take these issues very seriously, and each of our companies has developed removal policies and practices that allow us to take a hard line against terrorist or violent extremist content on our hosted consumer services,” the four companies explain in a joint venture.
“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 online terrorist content.”
A particular goal of the collaboration will be to improve joint technical projects that can help detect terrorist content using machine learning.
Microsoft, as one of the pioneers of machine learning systems, will play an important role in this regard, although each company will contribute new solutions and define standardized transparency reporting methods for content removal.
“The new forum builds on initiatives such as the EU Internet Forum and the Joint Industry Hash Database. Discussions with the UK; and the conclusions of recent G7 and European Council meetings,” the announcement reveals, indicating that this new alliance comes after requests from the European Union that have asked technology organizations to increase the fight against terrorism online.
Other major tech companies are also expected to join this forum in the near future, so expect more news on this front very soon.
