YouTube, Google and Facebook are among internet companies who have started to remove extremist content from their websites, particularly videos from the Islamic State. “The companies would not confirm that they are using the method or talk about how it might be employed, but numerous people familiar with the technology said that posted videos could be checked against a database of banned content to identify new postings of, say, a beheading or a lecture inciting violence,” write Joseph Menn and Dustin Volz in Reuters, June 25, 2016.
The companies are using systems previously used to enforce copyright laws. They move automatically to take down extremist content something that European and American leaders have urged them to do. “But upgrading automated systems for the suppression of extremist content would be a step with potentially serious and unknown consequences, since existing systems that take down content for suspected copyright and other violations deal with huge volumes of information and are routinely abused to suppress legal speech. Additionally, suppression of extremist speech may contain a lot more grey area than clearly-defined illegal content, like pirated media and child pornography, writes T.C. Sottek in The Verge, June 25, 2016.