Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, YouTube Create Forum Against Online Terrorist, Violent Content

Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and Alphabet/Google's YouTube formed the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism to boost their collaboration in curbing online terrorist and violent extremist content, said Facebook in a Monday news release. The forum builds on the companies' initiative with the EU (see 1606030037 and 1605310051), creation of a shared industry hashtag database (see 1612060053 and 1612090049) and other efforts. The forum "will formalize and structure existing and future areas of collaboration between our companies and foster cooperation with smaller tech companies, civil society groups and academics, governments and supra-national bodies such as the EU and the UN." Initially, the forum will focus on technological solutions, research on counter-speech efforts and more collaboration with counterterrorism experts to develop best practices and other initiatives.