Tech giants announce plans to create digital footprint to reduce radicalisation online

FOUR of the world’s biggest tech giants - Facebook, YouTube, Microsoft and Twitter - will create a digital “footprint” of content they can share behind the scenes. Should we be worried?

Facebook, which also owns Instagram and Whatsapp, is one of the companies that has pledged to flag and share radical content. Picture: AFP PHOTO / Justin TALLIS

FOUR of the world’s largest technology giants will join forces to stop the spread of radical content online.

Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, and YouTube announced they will create a shared industry database of “hashes” that are unique digital “fingerprints” for violent images that have been flagged and removed from their sites.

The companies will mark the worst content they receive with the unique code. They can then share that information with others who will be able to find the content on their own sites and remove it as necessary.

“By sharing this information with each other, we may use the shared hashes to help identify potential terrorist content on our respective hosted consumer platforms,” the companies said in a blog post.

“We hope this collaboration will lead to greater efficiency as we continue to enforce our policies to help curb the pressing global issue of terrorist content online.”

Twitter has been facing increased pressure to crack down on trolling on the platform. Picture: AFP PHOTO / Leon NEAL

It comes as the world’s biggest social media companies are facing criticism for failing to combat the spread of radical content on their sites where people are increasingly living their lives.

While they have made commitments to blocking users and removing inappropriate content in the past, this latest move is the first step towards industry-wide collaboration on the issue.

Despite the positive step, each company will still have to determine which content is “hashed” and added to the shared database. Each company will then decide what to remove.

“Throughout this collaboration, we are committed to protecting our users’ privacy and their ability to express themselves freely and safely on our platforms,” the companies said.

“We also seek to engage with the wider community of interested stakeholders in a transparent, thoughtful and responsible way as we further our shared objective to prevent the spread of terrorist content online while respecting human rights.”

Last month, Twitter suspended a number of prominent accounts linked to the US alternative right political movement including that of white nationalist Richard Spencer. It has also banned Breitbart columnist Milo Yiannopoulos after he encouraged his followers to troll Ghostbusters actor Leslie Jones.