YouTube, Meta to expand research and policies to fight online extremism
- YouTube has said that it will expand its policies to combat online extremism
- Meta has partnered with researchers who study onlone extremism
- Microsoft has pledged to make its AI and facial recognition tools cheaper for schools and smaller organisations
Google’s YouTube and Meta have promised to find new ways to tackle online extremism, the tech companies said at a White House summit on fighting violence on the internet, Reuters reported.
YouTube has committed to expand its existing policies on online extremism which seek to remove content that promote violence even if the content creators aren’t related to terror organisations. While the video-streaming company already has community guidelines in place, especially those that prohibit calls for violence, YouTube did not apply the policies to some videos promoting militia groups which were involved in the January 6 attack on Capitol Hill in 2020.
Meta has said that the company will be partnering with the researchers at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies’ Center on Terrorism, Extremism and Counterterrorism, according to a Reuters report.
Microsoft was present as well and pledged to make a cheaper and basic version of its artificial intelligence along with its machine learning tools. The company said that it would provide the technologies to schools and smaller organisations to help them identify and prevent violence.
Recently, tech companies like the ones mentioned above have come under heavy fire over the last few years for their reluctance to directly involve themselves in what they say could potentially be viewed as restricting the freedom of speech. However, critics have said that their reluctance has led them to platform hate speech, violent rhetoric and lies from extremists.
At the summit, US President Joe Biden called on American citizens to speak out against racism and extremism. He said that he would ask Congress to do more to ensure that social media companies are held accountable for spreading hate.
Biden said that the country had been experiencing a “through line of hate” against minority groups and that violent, prejudiced rhetoric had been given “too much oxygen” by politics and the media over the past few years.
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