Social media companies will be fined if they fail to remove extremist content from their sites within an hour of being alerted by police, according to proposals under discussion in Brussels. The European Union is planning to act after increasing irritation at the failure of companies such as Facebook and YouTube to remove extremist content. The issue is particularly keenly felt in Europe after a string of terrorist attacks in the last year with every one of them linked to “online terrorist content”, according to the senior EU official responsible for security, Julian King. “Big social media companies have been warned for years about terrorist content on their sites. It has taken them a long time to make any meaningful advances,” said Robert Postings, who examined the role of social media sites in the plotting of terrorist attacks. His report - Spiders of the Caliphate published in May by the Counter Extremism Project – found that ISIS networks were growing on Facebook and had the potential to plan and direct terror attacks as well as recruit new members. “Regulation from the EU, and governments in general, is a good way to encourage them to counter this terrorist content more efficiently,” he told The National. The Counter Extremism Project found that in three months this year, YouTube hosted some 1,348 ISIS videos.