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Nairaland Forum / Science/Technology / Facebook Reveals Measures To Remove Terrorist Content (399 Views)
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Facebook Reveals Measures To Remove Terrorist Content by megafem1: 9:56pm On Jun 17, 2017 |
Facebook has announced details of steps it
is taking to remove terrorist-related content.
The move comes after growing pressure
from governments for technology
companies to do more to take down
material such as terrorist propaganda.
In a series of blog posts by senior figures
and an interview with the BBC, Facebook
says it wants to be more open about the
work it is doing.
The company told the BBC it was using
artificial intelligence to spot images, videos
and text related to terrorism as well as
clusters of fake accounts.
"We want to find terrorist content
immediately, before people in our
community have seen it," it said.
No safe space
The ability of so-called Islamic State to use
technology to radicalise and recruit people
has raised major questions for the large
technology companies.
They have been criticised for running
platforms used to spread extremist ideology
and inspire people to carry out acts of
violence.
Governments, and the UK in particular, have
been pushing for more action in recent
months, and across Europe talk has been
moving towards legislation or regulation.
Earlier this week in Paris, the British prime
minister and the president of France
launched a joint campaign to ensure the
internet could not be used as a safe space
for terrorists and criminals.
Among the issues being looked at, they said,
was creating a new legal liability for
companies if they failed to remove certain
content, which could include fines.
Facebook says it is committed to finding
new ways to find and remove material - and
now wants to do more than talk about it.
"We want to be very open with our
community about what we're trying to do to
make sure that Facebook is a really hostile
environment for terror groups," Monika
Bickert, director of global policy
management at Facebook, told the BBC.
One criticism British security officials make
is of the extent to which companies rely on
others to report extremist content rather
than acting proactively themselves.
Facebook has previously announced it is
adding 3,000 employees to review content
flagged by users.
But it also says that already more than half
of the accounts that it removes for
supporting terrorism are ones that it finds
itself.
It says it is also now using new technology
to improve its proactive work.
"We know we can do better at using
technology - and specifically artificial
intelligence - to stop the spread of terrorist
content on Facebook," the company says.
Automatic analysis
One aspect of the novel technology it is
talking about for the first time is image
matching.
If someone tries to upload a terrorist photo
or video, the systems look to see if this
matches previous known extremist content
to stop it going up in the first place.
A second area is experimenting with AI to
understand text that might be advocating
terrorism.
This is analysing text previously removed for
praising or supporting a group such as IS
and trying to work out text-based signals
that such content may be terrorist
propaganda.
That analysis goes into an algorithm
learning how to detect similar posts.
Machine learning should mean that this
process will improve over time.
The company says it is also using algorithms
to detect "clusters" of accounts or images
relating to support for terrorism.
This will involve looking for signals such as
whether an account is friends with a high
number of accounts that have been disabled
for supporting terrorism.
The company also says it is working on
ways to keep pace with "repeat offenders"
who create accounts just to post terrorist
material and look for ways of circumventing
existing systems and controls.
"Our technology is going to continue to
evolve just as we see the terror threat
continue to evolve online," Ms Bickert told
the BBC.
"Our solutions have to be very dynamic."
One of the major challenges in automating
the process is the risk of taking down
material relating to terrorism but not
actually supporting it - such as news articles
referring to an IS propaganda video that
might feature its text or images.
Whereas any image of child sexual abuse is
illegal and can be taken down, an image
relating to terrorism - such as an IS member
waving a flag - can be used to glorify an act
in one context or be used as part of a
counter-extremism campaign in another.
"Context is everything," Ms Bickert said.
Caught out
The company says its algorithms are not yet
as good as people at understanding the
context that helps distinguish between the
different categories.
Facebook says it has grown its team of
specialists so that it now has 150 people
working on counter-terrorism specifically,
including academic experts on
counterterrorism, former prosecutors,
former law enforcement agents and
analysts, and engineers.
Ms Bickert said: "We have to have people
who can review it.
"I like to think of it as using the computers
to do what computers do well and using
people to do what people do well."
Challenges remain. A few minutes after
creating an account in a made-up name, I
was able to find complete versions of IS
propaganda videos that included the
beheading of Western hostages.
Critics argue that the challenges may be
enormous in a site with two billion users
but the company makes billions of dollars
from the content on its site and could
devote more resources - and more of its
best engineers - to dealing with the issue.
The company says it has begun focusing its
"most cutting edge techniques" to combat
the problem and clearly now believes it
needs to be seen to be acting. |
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