Google to divert extremist searches to anti-radicalisation websites

In particular, MP committee chairman Keith Vaz asked the companies to provide the number of people who monitor the content – so-called ‘hit squads.’ Google and Facebook didn’t give a number, while Twitter executives said there were “more than 100” personnel involved in the task.

Google, Facebook, and Twitter are among dozens of Silicon Valley companies that have come under pressure in recent years to help fight jihadi propaganda online. One of those programs involves ensuring that “when people put potentially damaging search terms into our search engine they also find these counter narratives”.

For example, someone searching for the term “join Isis” could be directed to a link to the website of the Quilliam Foundation, the counter-extremism think tank. The scheme allows not-for-profit orgs, which want to run campaigns against terrorism, to place free ads on Google’s search engine, via an AdWords grant.

When would-be terrorists go to Google to find violent propaganda or information about bomb-making, they may instead find a counter-narrative of moderation and non-aggression.

A new pilot program by Google and the UK Home Office will work to “combat” “radicalisation” by adjusting the “top” results if one searches for “extremist” material, according to the Telegraph.

The executives appeared before the committee to be questioned on their companies’ efforts to tackle online extremism and radicalization by groups such as Daesh terrorist group. Google’s House said it was “jurisdiction-dependent” because-in the US, for example-users have a right to be notified if the police have been investigating their online behaviour.

Simon Milner, Facebook’s policy director for the United Kingdom and Ireland, Middle East, Africa and Turkey, said that as per a research, people did not just get influenced by terrorist groups online. We have worked very hard to disrupt what they do. In 2014, Twitter removed tens of thousands of accounts that were spreading extremist content, Mr. Pickles said.

Twitter’s United Kingdom public policy boss Nick Pickles admitted that the microblogging site sometimes tips off users in Blighty who are under investigation by the police, though he insisted that this only happened on what he described as a “context specific” basis.