Representatives from Google, Facebook, and Twitter on Friday appeared before an Australian security committee as a united front, spruiking the idea that they're all working together to thwart nefarious activity, such as violent extremist material, from proliferating their respective platforms.
The trio told the
Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security as part of its
inquiry into extremist movements and radicalism in Australia that the effort is
a joint one and that the best way forward was to not actually legislate a ban
of all mentions of content deemed inappropriate.
"We all know
combating terrorism and extremism is a continuous challenge. And unless we can
completely eliminate hate and intolerance from society, there's going to be
hate and intolerance online," Facebook Australia's head of policy Josh
Machin said. "It's also a shared challenge between governments, industry
experts, academia, civil society, and the media."
Asked about what the
Australian government could do to help the platforms with such a mammoth task,
Twitter's senior director of public policy and philanthropy in the APAC region
Kathleen Reen said it would be incredibly problematic to use a blunt force
instrument like a ban.
"One of the things
that's really important in order to really de-radicalise groups to ensure
healthy, cohesive, inclusive, and diverse communities, is to make sure that
there's awareness, discussion, interrogation, and debate, and research about
what the problems actually are," she said.
"If you ban all
discussion at all about it … you may find yourself effectively chasing it off
our platforms where the companies are working to address these issues, and
pushing it out into other platforms."
Reen suggested,
instead, for "deep work" with academic and civil society experts, as
some examples, that considers how to create "cohesive communities when
you're also trying to stop those bad actors".
"To be clear,
stopping the conversation entirely won't address the problem in our view. In
fact, it'll make it worse," she said.
Facebook, Twitter,
Google-owned YouTube, as well as Microsoft in June 2017 stood up the Global Internet
Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) as a collective effort to
prevent the spread of terrorist and violent extremist content online. There are
now 13 companies involved.
The GIFCT shifted its
focus in the wake of the Christchurch terrorist attack and
the call to arms New
Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Arden made by way of the Christchurch
Call.
Reen said the Call was
a "watershed moment".
"It was a moment
for convening governments and industry and civil society together to unite
behind our mutual commitment for a safe, secure, and open internet. There was
also a moment to recognise that wherever evil manifests itself, it affects us
all," she said.
Reen said the group is
hoping to add more names to the GIFCT.
"We're looking
forward to expanding these partnerships in future because terrorism can't be solved
by one or a small group of companies alone," she said.
Part of expanding the
platforms involves working with smaller, less known platforms, with concerns an
unintended consequence of eliminating hate from the more popular ones will
result in echo chambers elsewhere.
"We know that
removing all discussion of particular viewpoints at times, no matter how
uncomfortable they may seem, we'll only chase extremist thinking to darker
corners of the internet, to other platforms, and to other services, services
that may be available in Australia," Reen said. "Services that may or
may not have been invited to participate in such conversations and critical
debates about what to do next."
Google Australia's
head of government affairs and public policy Samantha Yorke believes there is
clearly an opportunity for the big mainstream platforms to play a role.
"The only 'watch
out' for us all in the context of this particular conversation is just around
privacy issues that would inevitably pop up around behavioural profiles and
sharing information about specific identifiable users across different
companies and platforms," Yorke said. "There's some obvious areas
where there would be privacy implications there, but … it's an area that I
think is ripe for further exploration."
Twitter initiated a
URL sharing project, which has since been inserted into the greater GIFCT work.
She said since inception, about 22,000 shared URLs have been put into that
database.
"It speaks to the
importance of experimentation," she said. "And I think it also speaks
to the importance of transparency around these processes."
Similarly, YouTube
also has an "intel desk", which Yorke said is essentially tasked with
surveying what's happening on the web more broadly, identifying emerging themes
or patterns of behaviours that might be taking place off the YouTube platform,
but which may manifest in some way onto YouTube.
"It's seeking to
develop a little bit more of a holistic view of what's going on out
there," she said.
The trio agreed with
Reen's view that there is the opportunity for the Australian government to
potentially dig deeper into these partnerships more.
Appearing before the
committee on Thursday, Australian eSafety Commissioner Julie
Inman Grant was asked why a Google search for the Christchurch terrorist's
manifesto returns results.
"We're not going
to the war with the internet," she said.
MORE
FROM THE INQUIRY
Australia's
eSafety and the uphill battle of regulating the ever-changing online realm
The eSafety
Commissioner has defended the Online Safety Act, saying it's about protecting
the vulnerable and holding the social media platforms accountable for offering
a safe product, much the same way as car manufacturers and food producers are
in the offline world.
Home Affairs'
online team referred over 1,500 violent or extremist items for take-down
The department said
the content it refers to social media platforms is beyond the actions the
platforms themselves already take regarding the removal of items that incite
hate or violence, or promotes terrorist ideals.
Tech giants and
cops at least agree thwarting terrorist or extremist activity is a joint effort
Social media platforms
say they want to work with law enforcement and policymakers to stop their
platforms from being used to promote extremist movements and radicalism in
Australia.
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