Over the past few months, Google (and its product services, especially YouTube) have been under pressure from some governments to crackdown on the spread of terrorism and extremist videos. The search giant has today taken to its official blog to detail measures the company is adopting to curb the issue at hand.
In the blog post, Google mentions that there should be no place for terrorist content on our services on the interwebs. And while the search giant knows that it has already taken certain measures, such as reviewing and removing abusive content, using cutting-edge machine learning and image-matching technology to prevent re-uploads, to curb the spread of extremist content, it has now acknowledged that it needs to adopt more steps.
Thus, here are the four measures the search giant has outlined to remove terrorism-related content not only on Google but also on YouTube — prominently here. The company is bulking up on technology and further adding to its human team of reviewers, who’ll be able to catch what filters cannot.
Starting off, Google mentions that it will now be dedicate more engineering resources towards advanced research aimed to improve the content classifiers (the filter which demarcates what’s worth keeping or eliminating) that will enable the search giant to identify and remove extremist and terrorism-related content.
This is significant for the removal of detecting and removing ‘inappropriate’ YouTube videos, which can either be informational or promote violence. While it has already improved on the existing classification model, it needs to hunker down and dedicate time to the development of the same. The blog post mentions:
We have used video analysis models to find and assess more than 50 per cent of the terrorism-related content we have removed over the past six months.
Now, the human element of this dedicated effort to curb terrorism. Google states it is further adding to the number of independent experts in YouTube’s Trusted Flagger program in an attempt to improve its chances of catching such content.
While machines have grown powerful enough to defeat most qualified Chinese Go players, they’re still not completely competent in identifying extremist videos on YouTube. It still requires support from humans and Google is aware of the same. Thus, it is taking the following steps:
We will expand this programme by adding 50 expert NGOs to the 63 organisations who are already part of the programme, and we will support them with operational grants.
We will also expand our work with counter-extremist groups to help identify content that may be being used to radicalise and recruit extremists.
And with the YouTube adpocalypse, as it is being referred to, the company is taking more steps to prevent another situation from happening on the platform. If you’re unaware, some of the most high-profile brands had quit the video streaming platform for the ads were being placed on or next to extremist content.
YouTube has already taken some stringent steps to improve on the placement of ads on the platform, but it is now also adding an interstitial warning and stripping the video of monetization if it contains inflammatory religious or supremacist content. The said videos will neither appear in recommendations not will be it eligible for user comments or endorsements. This now leads YouTube to expand its counter-radicalisation efforts. To which, the blog post says,
We are working with Jigsaw to implement the “Redirect Method” more broadly across Europe. This promising approach harnesses the power of targeted online advertising to reach potential ISIS recruits and redirects them towards anti-terrorist videos that can change their minds about joining.
And Google isn’t the sole operators against the fight towards terrorism. It has been joined by their industry colleagues—including Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter, who’re currently working on the development of a common platform to accelerate their rate of action against extremist content online.
