Tech and social media giants Facebook, Twitter, Google and
Microsoft are making efforts to further combat extremism and harmful hate
speech.
The Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) is updating
its database with increased monitoring of dangerous domestic organizations that
are of focus for each platform, for the first time. The GIFCT, until now, had
been only focusing on content from terrorist groups on a United Nations list. It
will now target white supremacist violence, and other publications and links
flagged by UN initiative Tech Against Terrorism.
The Reuters has reported that the GIFCT will add URLs and
PDFs from groups like the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters and neo-Nazis. Many of
these groups have already been banned by popular social media companies
including Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.
These platforms have been taking steps to limit the reach of several US-based
organizations over the past two years.
Vicious activity by dangerous groups and organizations,
nevertheless, continues to surface on social media platforms. The not-so-successful
algorithms of social platforms, often, in fact promote such content as it gets
more user attention and engagement in the form of discussions. Therefore, we
aren’t sure if an expansion of social media platforms’ efforts will really
improve the situation, but we can hope for it to.
