A nonprofit dedicated to combatting terrorist propaganda on Friday said it has new technology that can help social media companies better identify the type of posts and videos that investigators believe helped drive Omar Mateen to shoot 102 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., on Sunday.
The Counter Extremism Project, which was founded by a group of former world leaders and diplomats, has taken Twitter, Facebook and Google to task for not doing enough to prevent groups such as the self-proclaimed Islamic State from exploiting their platforms to recruit adherents, incite lone-wolf attacks, raise money and distribute their barbaric videos.
“If we seize this opportunity and have partners across the social media spectrum willing to fight the extremist threat by deploying this technology, extremists will find Internet and social media platforms far less available for their recruiting, fundraising, propagandizing and calls to violence,” said Hany Farid, the project’s senior adviser.
“It is no longer a matter of not having the technological ability to fight online extremism. It is a matter of the industry and private sector partners having the will to take action.”
The Obama administration has reached out to Silicon Valley for help, and is pushing companies such as Google to be more aggressive in monitoring their content and blocking terrorists from using it.
Twitter, Facebook and Google are fending off at least two lawsuits from relatives of victims’ of the Islamic State’s deadly attacks on Paris last November.
Farid, who is a computer science professor at Dartmouth College, helped Microsoft develop the photoDNA software used to fight child pornography online. He has adapted it to help spot and block extremist propaganda.
“The new tool will be able to immediately identify this content online and flag it for removal for any technology company utilizing the hashing algorithm,” the project stated.
The Counter Extremism Project proposes a national office for reporting extremism, to be housed at the project, that would be a database of terrorist content that would optimize the use of Farid’s software.
“Tech companies try to take down heinous content that violates their terms of service, but the process is manual and reactive, which hampers speed and effectiveness,” the project maintains. “CEP’s new technology will streamline and accelerate the process.”
