Facebook partners with non-profits in UK against extremist content

Facebook is partnering with non-profit organizations in the UK to curate the content of posts on its social network. The arrows are aimed at hate speech and videos that glorify violence.

The social media giant calls it a ‘counter speech’ campaign to British newspaper The Telegraph. This consists of funding for research into how best to combat such statements on Facebook, as well as training in existing methods of combating and funding for their implementation. In addition, Facebook will also offer free advertising space to the non-profits. A complete list of organizations that Facebook collaborates with is unknown, but at least the Jo Cox Foundation is involved. Facebook is also already implementing these strategies in France and Germany.

Facebook had recently announced its intention to act more often and harder against this type of content on its platform. The reason for this intention and the swift actions to that end is probably the pressure that the G7 countries, including the US, UK and the EU, put on tech companies a month ago. They called for the fight against ‘terrorist abuse of the internet’. British Prime Minister Theresa May, in particular, championed this case in the wake of the recent attacks in London and Manchester.

Recently, YouTube also took measures to combat this type of content on its platform. There is also cooperation with outside organizations in order to have as many eyes and hands as possible at their disposal. Machine learning is also used as much as possible and advertisements are thrown into the fray.