INTERNET & ONLINE ACTIVITY

Home Office steps up fight against terror content with new technology.

INTERNET giants will have little excuse for allowing extremist propaganda on their websites after the Home Office unveiled new technology to detect hate content.

Web firms have been told to increase efforts to remove terror-related posts after the UK was hit by attacks in London and Manchester last year. All had an “online component”, the Home Office said.

Now the UK Government has revealed advanced technology that aims to automatically detect extremist and hateful videos and content before they become publicly available online.

Tests have shown the £600,000 tool can identify 94 per cent of the entire content in Islamic State propaganda videos. The breakthrough came as a Home Office analysis revealed IS supporters used more than 400 separate online platforms to pump out propaganda last year.

The Home Office said it would share the technology with firms to combat the abuse of their platforms. Home Secretary Amber Rudd welcomed the development as she visited San Francisco for talks with technology giants. She said: “Those who commit terror attacks on our streets are increasingly influenced by what they see online. I hope this new technology the Home Office has helped develop can support others to go further and faster.”

Using ‘advanced machine learning’, the technology analyses terror videos to pick out ‘subtle signals’ and determine whether it is IS related propaganda or something else, such as a news report. The systems can be adapted to look for other violent extremist content.

The chief executive of ASI Data Science, Marc Warner, whose firm developed the new model, said major organisations such as Google and Facebook could not “solve this problem alone”.

YET, we all know that no amount of moral pressure has so far made Facebook, Google and Twitter remove the deluge of hate-filled extremism, sick trolling and other disturbing extreme content that pollutes their sites. Hit them in their pockets and they might just begin to change their ways.

It is promising that large scale multiconglomerate companies such as the Anglo-Dutch company Unilever is threatening to pull all advertising from the three internet giants if they don’t clamp down on this filth. Unilever – which has a £6.8billion-a-year marketing budget – is thoroughly sick of seeing its products being placed next to terrorist propaganda or sexualised images of children and has decided enough is enough.

Other big firms – notably Procter and Gamble – are making similar threats. We should sincerely hope many more will follow.

All we ever hear from the tech giants are weasel words. They say they take down extremist or illegal material as soon as they are alerted to it, but this is demonstrably untrue. And why should they have to be alerted, rather than policing this kind of content themselves?

The Home Office has now unveiled a new system that can automatically detect 94 per cent of Islamic State propaganda on the web. Is it really beyond multibillion pound corporations that specialise in technology to do the same – or even better? They have run out of excuses.