Google and Facebook want to help in the fight against terrorism by doing what they do best – spreading messages through ads and likes.
Silicon Valley executives including Apple CEO Tim Cook and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg met with US law enforcement and counter-terrorism officials last month, where some of the discussion focused on ways the tech companies can combat extremist propaganda.
Earlier this week, tech company executives briefed UK members of parliament about how they are fighting extremist, hateful and violent content.
In a new development, Google said it’s testing ways to counter extremist propaganda with positive messages on YouTube and in Google search results.
Google executive Anthony House told MPs that taking extremist videos down from YouTube isn’t enough, and people searching for that content should be presented with competing narratives:
We should get the bad stuff down, but it’s also extremely important that people are able to find good information, that when people are feeling isolated, that when they go online, they find a community of hope, not a community of harm.
There are two programs being tested by Google to make sure the positive messages are seen by people seeking out extremist content: one to make sure the “good” kind of videos are easily found on YouTube; and another to display positive messages when people search for extremist-related terms.
The second program involves giving grants to nonprofit organizations to use Google AdWords to display competing ads alongside the search results for those extremist-related terms.
A Google spokesperson told the Guardian:
The free Google AdWords Grant program is starting a pilot for a handful of eligible non-profit organizations to run ads against terrorism-related search queries of their choosing.
An example of a search term that might turn up the anti-extremist ads is “join ISIS,” a Google representative told Gizmodo.
Facebook’s Sandberg would seem to agree with Google’s new approach – at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland last month, she described how positive messages can be used to counter extremist and hateful content.
Image of Google courtesy of Castleski / Shutterstock.com.
Mahhn
“grants to nonprofit organizations to use Google AdWords” It’s a tax break, and marketing for google. Don’t think for a moment they would do it if it cost them money. As if giving you an opposite search result would make you buy a car when you were shopping for a bike. It’s all just words.
Anonymous
I’d try that search to see what it looks like, except I don’t want to end up on a “list” somewhere.
Bryan
too late
Terry
John Zorabedian: ‘Earlier this week, tech company executives briefed UK members of parliament about how they are fighting extremist, hateful and violent content.’
The ‘hateful’ content that Google, Facebook, Apple and other liberal media and political dictatorships are ‘fighting’ is democratic content, namely the online opposition comments of members of the democratic majority in Germany, France, Sweden, Denmark, Austria, Poland, Hungary and the United Kingdom to the mass entry into Europe of millions of non-Europeans from the Middle East and Africa, a phenomenon incited explicitly, arbitrarily – and illegally – by the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, in blatant contravention of the EU’s own Dublin agreement on immigration. This is why German lawyers are now taking Merkel to court. No wonder Merkel and the German government is coordinating the ‘fighting’ against democratic comment online.
This is nothing less than a full scale assault on democracy per se by Western liberalism and liberals, under the pretext of fighting ISIL. We, the democratic majority, now have two enemies.
Anonymous
“one to make sure the “good” kind of videos are easily found on YouTube; and another to display positive messages when people search for extremist-related terms.”
Giving better search rankings based on giving out the govt’s narrative is going to silence any alternative schools of thought.
Kyle Saia
lets hope the the people looking to join ISIS don’t have ad blocker installed ;)
Mex5150
I am vehemently against this kind of crap, it just the thin end of the censorship wedge. Fake adverts and forced redirections are all well and good against ISIS, but how long before the list starts growing?
Paul Ducklin
Interesting thoughts about “censorship” – one usually thinks of censorship as blocking out opposing viewpoints, not presenting your own views as well as opposing ones :-)