Second, I don’t think social media companies should be in the business of proxy policing. There are already powers in place for the authorities to hand over communications between individuals they think need to be monitored. The Committee is right that this could be made smoother and quicker. But to ask private companies to proactively monitor all their content for hints of terrorism or serious violence turns them into an extended arm of the law. As it stands, most internet companies don’t constantly monitor and review everything their users are writing – partly because those users would feel rightly a little aggrieved, and partly because it would be technologically difficult. Rather, they ask other users of the site to report content they think it is extreme, and then a human reviewer makes a judgment. There are millions of direct messages sent between Facebook users, or Twitter users, and so this would require some kind of automated system of detection using clever algorithms. This would be a monumental task. A good rule of thumb is that if humans can’t work it out, don’t expect algorithms to. More to the point, this sort of complicated monitoring for flashes of extremism would, I suspect, seriously damage people’s confidence in these platforms – and the economic and social benefit they provide. Not to mention the message it sends out. Expect Putin to be next in line, asking Facebook and Twitter to hand over all chats suggestive of extreme anti-Russian sentiment that he reckons could lead to terrorism.