Internet Giants 'Consciously Failing' To Tackle Extremism On The Web

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The UK parliament claims that Google, Facebook and Twitter are all "consciously failing" on terrorism. The Home Affairs Committee points out that even though Facebook claims a billion users, it only has a team of a few hundred handling terrorist reports and that Twitter "does not even proactively report extremist content to law enforcement agencies."

The Home Affairs Committee says that social media giants like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are "consciously failing" to combat the use of their sites to promote terrorism and killings, in its report published following an inquiry that has lasted 12 months, and included visits to Glasgow, Bradford and Europol. The Committee says these networks have become "the vehicle of choice in spreading propaganda and the recruiting platforms for terrorism".
 
Good, I'm glad the "Internet giants" are "failing." Because if Facebook is any indication, there is a real risk the "Internet giants" would label every pro-Trump or anti-SJW communication as "extremist content."

The last thing we need is the people in power in government pressuring the "Internet giants" to do what the 1st Amendment prohibits the government itself from doing.
 
Isn't the whole point of net neutrality to not treat different types of traffic differently? Now they want ISPs to act as filters? Make up your mind, governments.
 
here this goes again. When another 9/11 hits, everyone and their mother will be saying take some of my freedom and just protect us.

5 years later fuck this, give me my freedom back, stop policing everything.

We want the best of both worlds but when tragedy hits home we are willing to give up little but we tend to forget that shit quick.
 
NKD said:
here this goes again. When another 9/11 hits, everyone and their mother will be saying take some of my freedom and just protect us.

5 years later fuck this, give me my freedom back, stop policing everything.

We want the best of both worlds but when tragedy hits home we are willing to give up little but we tend to forget that shit quick.
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Some of us have been here the whole time saying "stop taking my freedom".
 
it's scapegoating. Instead of tackling the real problems, it's easy to just point and say, video games killed this man or jihadist websites caused this guy to turn.
No one really gives a crap about filtering the internet. It's already too full of everything. Do you think people who are on the fence about committing some terrorist act are going to be pushed over if they got on google and searched for bacon? Somehow filtering it will provide a safe space? It's nuts what people think.
 
Hmm...now let's not get into thinking the Internet isn't changing the world. A lot of people point to mosques harboring extremism but something I think a lot of people fail to realize is that the Internet is a huge place, an environment where anyone around the world can connect to another and interact in meaningful ways.

Here is a study from RAND, https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sou...CCMwAw&usg=AFQjCNEqwVeFGtP6rVcM9s5HlG5E2jw2aw

It's the only thing I could get on short notice, but the gist is that the Internet is frequently tool for radicalism and that simply burying our heads in and saying First Amendment, Privacy, etc, etc. Is not the best solution.

Now, we try and minimize news stories about mass murderers, serial killers, suicides, right? Cause it glorifies the act, makes it more alluring to those disaffected. To fight back against extremists we monitor mosques and imans, but we ignore the online component.

Now I'm not saying anything more than we should think about how the Internet affects us, including radicalism. To start thinking about solutions, that's more than a paragraph of text in 10 mins. All I'm stating is that while we hundreds here converse in a tech forum, billions of other human beings are interacting over the internet in a multitude of ways and over any topic, and in Raqqa there is a internet recruiter who is seeking disaffected Western Muslims and he or she is definitely attempting to radicalize or continue the process of radicalisation.

You can shutdown a mosque in London, arrest a iman, track down literature, intercept phone calls, guard the border, but you can't stop the Internet. Not yet.

Again, I'm not saying any solutions just consider this may become something that we might consider a problem as the internet changes our world and our way of interacting. The printing press allowed literacy, literature, new ideas, changed the way we interacted, the Internet is doing the same.
 
pcgeekesq said:
Good, I'm glad the "Internet giants" are "failing." Because if Facebook is any indication, there is a real risk the "Internet giants" would label every pro-Trump or anti-SJW communication as "extremist content."

The last thing we need is the people in power in government pressuring the "Internet giants" to do what the 1st Amendment prohibits the government itself from doing.
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You do realize that an American company that operates in foreign countries has to abide by their laws within those borders. In this case, it is the UK.

Also, way to go on turning it into a bullshit trump-clinton-sjw flamebait, like that hasn't been done enough.

By the way, I absolutely agree with you that making them self censor is a slippery slope that is just asking for abuse. You have to find a better way.
 
Steve said:
and that Twitter "does not even proactively report extremist content to law enforcement agencies."
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Here's the problem with that: who gets to decide what is "extremist", and what happens to Twitter if that user sues for discrimination?

In France for example, just wearing Muslim clothing is considered extremist, whereas in the US we are free to wear whatever we want (as long as we aren't naked). Likewise with freedom of speech

In order for Twitter to report a post as "extremist", they would first have to figure out what country that person lives in, and whether that post would be considered "extreme speech" or "protected speech" in that specific country. VPNs make determining this nearly impossible.

European countries (especially France and the UK) seem to keep forgetting that their jurisdiction doesn't extend to the entire internet. Just because someone says something on the internet that happens to violate your local laws, doesn't give you the right to silence them.
 
Listen, I'm generally the first person to say "fuck the corporations" in almost any circumstance... but how in the world is it Facebook's or Google's responsibility to determine what is "terroristic" content and then report that to the relevant authorities?? NOBODY can decide where the line is, and with free speech, sarcasm, joking, people faking shit, etc... there's no fair way to determine this. This type of thing would be the various governments' jobs, and frankly, they deserve to look like idiots when they repeatedly fail to win an unwinnable "war".
 
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