Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube said this week they will partner to curb the spread of terrorist content online.
“There is no place for content that promotes terrorism on our hosted consumer services. When alerted, we take swift action against this kind of content in accordance with our respective policies,” said a Dec. 5 statement from the social media firms.
The companies said they will create a shared industry database of unique digital fingerprints, called hashes, for violent terrorist imagery or terrorist recruitment videos or images that were removed from their services.
The program is expected to begin early next year. The companies said they would look to add other firms to the collaboration in the future.
In a related story, Google has removed some of its search suggestions, including the phrase “are Jews evil,” which had been automatically generated by its search algorithm. As of Dec. 5, that phrase was no longer suggested to a user who typed in only the words “are Jews,” the London-based Guardian reported. — jta