Social networking platform Facebook — accused in more recent times of not only giving terrorists a place to spread their propaganda and plan attacks but also recruit impressionable youngsters to their cause — has detailed how it is fighting the menace on the website. The effort also extends to WhatsApp and Instagram.
Facebook Global Policy Management Director Monika Bickert and Counterterrorism Policy Manager Brian Fishman in a post on Thursday, June 15, on the social networking website explained their stance thus: "There's no place on Facebook for terrorism." The social networking platform, it may be noted, claims to have 1.94 billion active monthly users.
They went on to add: "We remove terrorists and posts that support terrorism whenever we become aware of them. When we receive reports of potential terrorism posts, we review those reports urgently and with scrutiny. And in the rare cases when we uncover evidence of imminent harm, we promptly inform authorities."
They also said: "Although academic research finds that the radicalisation of members of groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda primarily occurs offline, we know that the internet does play a role — and we don't want Facebook to be used for any terrorist activity whatsoever."
These are the three tools they are deploying to boot out terrorism from Facebook, and you can help!
1. Artificial Intelligence: Artificial Intelligence (AI) has used by the top tech companies in the world for quite some time now. However, Facebook is using it to counter terrorists and terrorism. For starters, it is using image-matching to crack down on propaganda materials, and language understanding to analyse and remove text messages and posts that praise terrorists and their organisations. It is also using AI to zero in and remove terrorist clusters.
Facebook is also cracking down on repeat offenders and the fake accounts created by them to promote terrorism or terrorist propaganda. It is also taking up information from WhatsApp and Instagram in order to build cross-platform intelligence.
2. Human intelligence: Facebook is also relying on reports and reviews given by its users to zero in on activities by terrorists on the social networking platform. It is also increasing its pool of terrorism and safety specialists who monitor content on Facebook and help discern the right from the wrong.
"We also have a global team that responds within minutes to emergency requests from law enforcement," they said about real-world threats.
3. Partnering: Facebook has already partnered with industry leaders such as Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube to cull out credible terrorist threats. It has said it has also learnt a lot through briefings from government agencies "in different countries about ISIS and Al Qaeda propaganda mechanisms." Facebook is also using counterspeech in its push for "challenging extremist narratives online." It has also said it supports "several major counterspeech programmes."
