Four US based tech companies have come together to combat terrorist content on the internet. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Microsoft each issued separate statements to the effect of forming a joint database to identify such content.
The database will contain hashes of terrorist related content, which will help the companies involved to take action more quickly. Despite this sharing of information, each company will still rely on its own internal policies for dealing with offending content. In other words, it sounds more like a system to alert each other that the particular offending piece exists, and then allowing them to separately take a look at it.
Mounting pressure from the EU is likely to have sparked the creation of this alliance, with authorities demanding that internet based companies do more to stem the tide of terrorist propaganda. Europe has seen a spate of lone wolf terror attacks in recent months, and has been looking for ways to crack down anything that may influence future incidents.
The group of companies are also working to add more companies to the fold in the future, although there has been no mention about who they are reaching out to. If anything, social media companies are the most likely to be invited to contribute to the database; seeing that terrorists have been using these kinds of services to reach out to potential recruits.
[Source: Twitter, Wall Street Journal, Facebook]
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