Four major U.S-based tech companies are banding together in an attempt to combat terrorist content on the internet as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft have issued seperate statements announcing that they will be collaborating with each other to prevent the spread of such content on their networks.
To combat terrorist content, the four companies will be working together to create a shared database that would allow them to track the digital fingerprints of accounts that share such contents or videos on their networks. Once the content is identified, the company who spotted it would hash said content to the shared database, allowing every company in the partnership to spot the same content on their own sites and remove it.
While the shared database system means that Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft will be able to get a heads up on the alleged terrorist content, this does not mean that the content itself will be removed automatically. Each company will review the content against their policies before deciding to do anything to it.
The decision to collaborate against terrorist content is the result of all four companies being pressured to curb the spread of terrorist propaganda by the European Unions. While the database is limited to these four companies for now, they companies have stated that they are working to include more companies to the collaboration in the future.
Source: The Wall Street Journal, Engadget