With the wave of concerning extremism from all ends of the spectrum surfacing on the Internet and eventually the real world it only makes sense that a digital giant such as a Google does their part to nip online extremism in the bud in Europe. YouTube is already attempting to stem extremist videos through removal of ads, however they will be taking it a step further. Here are the four ways that YouTube will attempt to cull the wave of extremist content on their site:
Technology
Currently, YouTube is using video analysis programs in order to detect extremist and terrorism-related content with a 50% success rate. With this new push for rooting out extremist content, they are investing greater engineering resources to improve content analysis to more quickly and easily detect and remove violating videos.
Independent experts
The Trust Flagger programme, a forum of experts that are able to nuance and flag extremist content from newsworthy content. They are able to accurately flag 90% of extremist/terrorism-related content but YouTube intends to expand this programme by adding 50 expert NGOs to the forum.
Tougher screening of content
There are a plethora of videos that may not directly violate YouTube policies but walk a fine line between extremism and information. These inflammatory videos will not be removed but will but will be unable to gain monetisation, user comments or even user endorsements.
Counter-radicalisation
The Creators for Change programme is an existing initiative that YouTube has implemented to discourage hate speech and radicalisation but a ‘Redirect Method’ will also be implemented across Europe in conjunction with Jigsaw. This will allow anti-hate propaganda and advertising to reach radicalised individuals based on their Internet usage in a step toward de-radicalisation. While this new push against extremist content is occurring only in Europe, it’s a much needed push to reduce the dangerous and inflammatory content that is flooding the mainstream Internet.
