Facebook, Google and Twitter have a ‘social responsibility’ to take terrorist propaganda offline, David Cameron warned yesterday, as he unveiled new measures to block jihadist material on the internet.
In
a speech to the Australian parliament, in Canberra, the Prime Minister
said the West faced a ‘new and pressing challenge’ in filtering out
extremist propaganda designed to radicalise impressionable youngsters in
this country.
British
police and intelligence experts are already removing an astonishing
1,000 extremist images and videos a week from the Internet – equal to
one every 10 minutes. Of these, some 80 per cent relate to jihadist
activities in Iraq and Syria.
But Mr Cameron said leading internet firms also had a ‘role’ to play.
‘In
the UK we are pushing companies to do more, including strengthening
filters, improving reporting mechanisms and being more proactive in
taking down this harmful material,’ he said.
‘We are making progress but there is further to go. This is their social responsibility. And we expect them to live up to it.’
His
comments came as Downing Street announced that several major internet
companies have now signed a deal to make it easier to taken extremist
propaganda offline.
Ministers
have been frustrated by the reluctance of some technology companies to
join the battle against terrorist material. There is irritation at the
slow response of some firms to requests to remove material, along with
frustration that extremists find it so easy to publish their propaganda
to a global audience in the first place.
Intelligence
experts believe that slick videos produced by jihadist groups like
Islamic State (Isil) and hate preachers play a major role in the
radicalisation of British youngsters driven to wage jihad.
Mr Cameron said leading internet firms also had a ‘role’ to play in removing extremist propaganda
Under
the terms of the new deal the major internet service providers have
agreed to introduce a ‘public reporting button’ on websites to make it
easier for members of the public to raise the alarm about extremist
material.
BT,
Virgin, Sky and Talk Talk have all signed up to the arrangement, which
will operate in a similar way to an existing service that allows people
to report child abuse images. The firms have also pledged to make their
filters more sophisticated to prevent the images ever appearing online
in the first place.
Google,
Facebook, Yahoo and Twitter have also agreed to help smaller industry
players ‘raise their standards’ and improve their capacity to deal with
the material.
The deal followed talks in Downing Street earlier this month between the industry and Cabinet Office minister Jo Johnson.
David Cameron is joining world leaders in Brisbane, Australia, for the G20 summit, which begins today
But a Government source said ministers believe the industry still has much further to go on the issue.
‘We
will keep pressing internet companies to be more proactive given the
scale of the threats and the persistent propaganda from the terrorist
groups,’ the source said.
‘Our
message is very clear – as these terrorist organisations are becoming
increasingly sophisticated and internet savvy, developing glossy
material designed purely to glorify and radicalise as well brutal images
of murders and attacks, these internet companies must take
responsibility for their role in getting as much of this material off
the internet as quickly as possible.’
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