UNITED NATIONS — The establishment was challenging the disrupters: Get your algorithms to stop terrorists from using the internet.

At an unusual session on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, leaders of one powerful government after another told the leaders of some of the most powerful internet companies to intensify their efforts to take down terrorist propaganda.

Sometimes the government officials displayed naïveté about how technology works. Other times, they sidestepped the more difficult questions, like how to distinguish between free expression and incitement to violence. They ignored the impassioned debates over what constitutes a terrorist. And they said little about how to address other kinds of hate speech – including posts that could incite racist or sexist violence. Both prevail on the internet.

Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain, one of the hosts of the event late Wednesday afternoon, pressed internet companies to put their army of bots to work to take down terrorist content. “Industry needs to go further and faster in automating the detection and removal of terrorist content online, and developing technological solutions which prevent it being uploaded in the first place,” she said.