Some of the web’s biggest destinations for watching videos have quietly
started using automation to remove extremist content from their sites,
according to two people familiar with the process.
The move is a
major step forward for internet companies that are eager to eradicate
violent propaganda from their sites and are under pressure to do so from
governments around the world as attacks by extremists proliferate, from
Syria to Belgium, the United States and Turkey.
YouTube and
Facebook are among the sites deploying systems to block or rapidly take
down Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) videos and other
similar material, the sources said.
The technology was originally
developed to identify and remove copyright-protected content on video
sites. It looks for “hashes,” a type of unique digital fingerprint that
internet companies automatically assign to specific videos, allowing all
content with matching fingerprints to be removed rapidly.
Such a
system would catch attempts to repost content already identified as
unacceptable, but would not automatically block videos that have not
been seen before.
The companies would not confirm that they are
using the method or talk about how it might be employed, but numerous
people familiar with the technology said that posted videos could be
checked against a database of banned content to identify new postings
of, say, a beheading or a lecture inciting violence.
The two
sources would not discuss how much human work goes into reviewing videos
identified as matches or near-matches by the technology. They also
would not say how videos in the databases were initially identified as
extremist.
Use of the new technology is likely to be refined over
time as internet companies continue to discuss the issue internally and
with competitors and other interested parties.
In late April,
amid pressure from U.S. President Barack Obama and other U.S. and
European leaders concerned about online radicalization, internet
companies including Alphabet Inc’s YouTube, Twitter Inc, Facebook Inc
and CloudFlare held a call to discuss options, including a
content-blocking system put forward by the private Counter Extremism
Project, according to one person on the call and three who were briefed
on what was discussed.
The discussions underscored the central
but difficult role some of the world’s most influential companies now
play in addressing issues such as terrorism, free speech and the lines
between government and corporate authority.
None of the companies
at this point has embraced the anti-extremist group’s system, and they
have typically been wary of outside intervention in how their sites
should be policed.
“It’s a little bit different than copyright or
child pornography, where things are very clearly illegal,” said Seamus
Hughes, deputy director of George Washington University’s Program on
Extremism.
Extremist content exists on a spectrum, Hughes said, and different web companies draw the line in different places.
Most
have relied until now mainly on users to flag content that violates
their terms of service, and many still do. Flagged material is then
individually reviewed by human editors who delete postings found to be
in violation.
The companies now using automation are not publicly
discussing it, two sources said, in part out of concern that terrorists
might learn how to manipulate their systems or that repressive regimes
might insist the technology be used to censor opponents.
“There’s
no upside in these companies talking about it,” said Matthew Prince,
chief executive of content distribution company CloudFlare. “Why would
they brag about censorship?”
The two people familiar with the
still-evolving industry practice confirmed it to Reuters after the
Counter Extremism Project publicly described its content-blocking system
for the first time last week and urged the big internet companies to
adopt it.
The April call was led by Facebook’s head of global
policy management, Monika Bickert, sources with knowledge of the call
said. On it, Facebook presented options for discussion, according to one
participant, including the one proposed by the non-profit Counter
Extremism Project.
The anti-extremism group was founded by, among
others, Frances Townsend, who advised former president George W. Bush
on homeland security, and Mark Wallace, who was deputy campaign manager
for the Bush 2004 re-election campaign.
Three sources with
knowledge of the April call said that companies expressed wariness of
letting an outside group decide what defined unacceptable content.
Other
alternatives raised on the call included establishing a new
industry-controlled nonprofit or expanding an existing
industry-controlled nonprofit. All the options discussed involved
hashing technology.
The model for an industry-funded organization
might be the nonprofit National Center for Missing and Exploited
Children, which identifies known child pornography images using a system known as PhotoDNA. The system is licensed for free by Microsoft Corp.
Microsoft
announced in May it was providing funding and technical support to
Dartmouth College computer scientist Hany Farid, who works with the
Counter Extremism Project and helped develop PhotoDNA, “to develop a
technology to help stakeholders identify copies of patently terrorist
content.”
Facebook’s Bickert agreed with some of the concerns
voiced during the call about the Counter Extremism Project’s proposal,
two people familiar with the events said. She declined to comment
publicly on the call or on Facebook’s efforts, except to note in a
statement that Facebook is “exploring with others in industry ways we
can collaboratively work to remove content that violates our policies
against terrorism.”
In recent weeks, one source said, Facebook
has sent out a survey to other companies soliciting their opinions on
different options for industry collaboration on the issue.