News and Media

The European Parliament today voted in favour of regulation preventing the dissemination of terrorist content online. CEP Executive Director David Ibsen said the regulation was "a positive start in the fight against digital radicalisation, propaganda, and recruitment, which have long played havoc with Europe's digital users."

CEP reports weekly on the methods used by extremists to exploit the Internet and social media platforms to recruit followers and incite violence. This week’s edition finds that videos from the Christchurch terror attack are still being uploaded online. Further, ISIS content and propaganda is found on nearly two dozen platforms.

CEP and the UN Office of Counter Terrorism will have a brown bag lunch and roundtable discussion on April 25 from 1-2:30 hosted by the Permanent Mission of the Federal Republic of Germany to the UN. The topic of the free event will be the regulatory and technological efforts and challenges of countering the misuse of the internet and social media applications by terrorist organizations.

This week, CEP revealed that supporters of the neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen Division ( AWD ) have re-uploaded AWD’s videos yet again on YouTube. Despite the tech giant banning AWD’s channel more than a year ago, YouTube failed to prevent the upload of this known extremist content. Clearly, YouTube’s promises – as touted by Google’s Counsel for Free Expression and Human Rights Alexandria Walden before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday – to ban content that “promotes and incites violence against individuals or groups, or promotes hatred against individuals or groups based on their characteristics, including race, gender, ethnicity, religion” remains categorically unfilled.

During today’s House Judiciary Committee hearing, when asked what Google was doing to stop far-right propaganda from spreading on YouTube, Counsel for Free Expression and Human Rights Alexandria Walden stated that for “borderline” content, YouTube algorithms demonetize the videos and stop the recommendation system from suggesting it to users. She also stated that content that “promotes and incites violence against individuals or groups, or promotes hatred against individuals or groups based on their characteristics, including race, gender, ethnicity, religion … is violative of our community guidelines.” In response, CEP is releasing findings that show that supporters of the neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen Division have re-uploaded that group’s videos yet again to YouTube.

CEP today called on members of the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary to use their Tuesday hearing on hate crimes and white nationalism to hold the tech industry accountable for its failure to permanently remove extremist and terrorist content in disregard for public safety and security, particularly in the wake of the New Zealand shootings. Ahead of Facebook and Google’s testimony, CEP is releasing a list of questions with the aim of holding tech companies accountable for their inaction regarding extremist content online.

CEP issued statements today following the vote in the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) on the draft report on Preventing the dissemination of terrorist content online. CEP Executive Director David Ibsen said in part: “Today’s vote was a critical step forward in the worldwide fight against the spread of terrorism. Police investigations have repeatedly proven the critical link between radicalizing content online and terrorist incidents. The easy availability of terrorist content online continues to have a huge impact on radicalization, recruitment, and incitement to violence."

Last weekend, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg , called for governments and regulators to become involved in censoring harmful content online. However, Mr. Zuckerberg’s call was intentionally heavy on idealism and rhetoric, and light on specifics. Once more, the company’s PR strategy is carefully calibrated to give the public very little understanding of how Mr. Zuckerberg plans to support his words with action.