Google Increases Measures to Remove Terroristic and Extremist Content on YouTube

Google will be taking more precise measures and cautions when it comes to terroristic or violent extremist content on YouTube, its video-sharing platform, the company revealed in a blog post Sunday. In fact, the company will be removing this harsh content in its entirety.

When it comes to videos containing supremacist or inflammatory religious content, Google said it would issue a warning in regards to the videos, and would not monetize or recommend them for user endorsements, even if the content doesn’t necessarily violate its policies.

More engineering resources will be put to use in order to increase technology that will help identify extremist content, as well as training new content classifiers to effectively remove such videos.

“While we and others have worked for years to identify and remove content that violates our policies, the uncomfortable truth is that we, as an industry, must acknowledge that more needs to be done. Now,” Google’s general counsel Kent Walker said.

The company plans to expand its collaboration with counter-extremist groups to identify any materials that could possibly radicalize and recruit extremists. Google will also attempt to persuade those who may intrigued to join extremist groups. They plan on reaching potential Islamic State recruits through targeted online advertising and redirecting them to anti-terrorist videos in hopes of changing their minds about participating in such drastic behaviors.

In 2016, the Foreign Ministry called on governments throughout the world to more effectively regulate social media during an anti-racism conference in New York.

“Social media companies are happy to use the data they collect on all of us to make money, but unfortunately not to help stop terror,” Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan said.

Germany, France and Britain, who have been prone to terrorist attacks by Islamist militants within recent years, have urged social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Google make more of an effort to remove militant content and hate speech.

Facebook announced in a blog post Thursday that they have increased their efforts in removing terroristic content by increasing the use of artificial intelligence to identify certain images and language in order to remove this content quickly.

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