Facebook no place for terrorists, company says

Facebook Inc. said it wants to be a “hostile place” for terrorists, and outlined Thursday a series of steps it’s taking to counteract terrorism on its platforms. These actions include using artificial intelligence to match images flagged as belonging to terrorist photos or videos, to identify text that might be advocating terrorism, or to pick up on groups, posts or profiles supporting terrorism, the company said in a blog post. Facebook said it has begun collaborating across its platforms, including the messaging service WhatsApp and image-sharing network Instagram, to pinpoint troubling information. “Given the limited data some of our apps collect as part of their service, the ability to share data across the whole family is indispensable to our efforts to keep all our platforms safe,” the post said. Last summer, WhatsApp began sharing users’ phone numbers with the social media giant. The company said it’s also working with others in industry and government, and that even though it “can’t read the contents of individual encrypted messages” because of end-to-end encryption, which was introduced to WhatsApp last year, it does “provide the information we can in response to valid law enforcement requests, consistent with applicable law and our policies.” Earlier this year, the U.K. Home Secretary called for messaging services like WhatsApp to not be a place “for terrorists to hide” in the wake of an attack outside the British houses of parliament after it was reported the suspect had used the service mere minutes before carrying out the attack that left four people dead. “Although academic research finds that the radicalization of members of groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda primarily occurs offline, we know that the internet does play a role — and we don’t want Facebook to be used for any terrorist activity whatsoever,” Facebook said.

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Facebook no place for terrorists, company says

Brief | June 16, 2017

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