Google and Facebook introduce automatic blocking of extremist content

Following the earlier agreement of Microsoft, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter with the EU to identify and take down hate speech online, some of these companies – at least Google and Facebook – have tacitly moved towards automatic recognition and take-down of the known extremist content from their platform, Reuters reports. According to the report, it is the same approach used for taking down the copyright-protected content online. The system doesn’t, however, identify new extremist content but rather prevents the already marked videos from being uploaded again and shared further. Google and Facebook haven’t confirmed the report, possibly due to a concern that terrorist groups could look for ways to circumvent such automated approach.