Facebook, Twitter, Google and Microsoft team up to tackle extremist content; Guardian, 12/5/16

Olivia Solon, Guardian; Facebook, Twitter, Google and Microsoft team up to tackle extremist content:

"Google, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft have pledged to work together to identify and remove extremist content on their platforms through an information-sharing initiative.

The companies are to create a shared database of unique digital fingerprints – known as “hashes” – for images and videos that promote terrorism. This could include recruitment videos or violent terrorist imagery or memes. When one company identifies and removes such a piece of content, the others will be able to use the hash to identify and remove the same piece of content from their own network...

Because the companies have different policies on what constitutes terrorist content, they will start by sharing hashes of “the most extreme and egregious terrorist images and videos” as they are most likely to violate “all of our respective companies” content policies, they said."

From Hate Speech To Fake News: The Content Crisis Facing Mark Zuckerberg; NPR, 11/17/16

Aarti Shahani, NPR; From Hate Speech To Fake News: The Content Crisis Facing Mark Zuckerberg:

"Some in Silicon Valley dismiss the criticisms against Facebook as schadenfreude: Just like taxi drivers don't like Uber, legacy media envies the success of the social platform and enjoys seeing its leadership on the hot seat.

A former employee is not so dismissive and says there is a cultural problem, a stubborn blindness at Facebook and other leading Internet companies like Twitter. The source says: "The hardest problems these companies face aren't technological. They are ethical, and there's not as much rigor in how it's done."

At a values level, some experts point out, Facebook has to decide if its solution is free speech (the more people post, the more the truth rises), or clear restrictions."