Jacob Burge

Earlier this year, YouTube lost millions in advertising revenue with major brands temporarily pausing spending as it was revealed their names were appearing next to videos with extremist views.

How Facebook is using AI to tackle terrorism online Terrorism How Facebook is using AI to tackle terrorism online


The Google-owned video platform has now explained how it is tackling the uploading of extremist and terror-related content. Kent Walker, the general counsel at Google, in a Financial Times op-ed, has explained the firm is using four methods to tackle the posts.

The first of these, is machine learning and artificial intelligence. "We have used video analysis models to find and assess more than 50 per cent of the terrorism-related content we have removed over the past six months," Walker wrote. He continued to say new "content classifiers" would be created to help the automated systems recognise what is extreme content.

Read next The Plandemic conspiracy has a wild new fan club: Facebook moms The Plandemic conspiracy has a wild new fan club: Facebook moms

Although Google and YouTube's approach will heavily rely on the machine learning techniques it is developing, humans aren't being removed from the equation. There will be more independent (human) experts in YouTube's 'Flagger' programme. It's giving grants to 50 NGOs so they can help provide assistance about types of content.

"Third, we will be taking a tougher stance on videos that do not clearly violate our policies — for example, videos that contain inflammatory religious or supremacist content," Walker continued. This means videos that are in a grey area that Google and YouTube doesn't want to ban completely will be harder to find. They will only be shown after a warning appears and the creators will not be able to make money from them.


Subscribe to WIRED

YouTube also says it is expanding the work of its Jigsaw group, which points those looking for extremist material to "anti-terrorist videos".

Google hopes that the different steps will help it to reduce the criticism against it and other tech firms levied by the UK's politicians. Following a trio of terrorist attacks in the country, home secretary Amber Rudd and prime minister Theresa May have both called for 'cyberspace' to be regulated and "safe spaces" for extremist content to be removed from the internet.

The Sun has also reported foreign secretary Boris Johnson will encourage EU ministers to extend laws around online extremism. Germany is already in the process of introducing laws to fine tech giants who don't remove hate speech and extremist content within 24-hours of it being reported.


A UK government committee also said, on August 2016, that Facebook, Twitter and Google have been "failing to tackle extremism". The Home Affairs Select Committee said the social networks need to show a "greater sense of responsibility" and they should use their earnings to help solve problems in the online world.

Last week, Facebook also revealed how it is attempting to tackle terrorists and extremists on its platform. Like Google, Mark Zuckerberg's social network is also increasing the amount of machine learning and artificial intelligence it uses to detect content.

The firm said it is using "algorithms to “fan out” to try to identify related material" to already known extremist content. "We use signals like whether an account is friends with a high number of accounts that have been disabled for terrorism, or whether an account shares the same attributes as a disabled account".