Facebook and Twitter: we want to act harder against extremism

Facebook and Twitter want to take much stricter action against extremism on their platforms. The companies announced this in response to the attack in central London last Saturday. The companies are thus rallying behind Prime Minister May, who is calling for the same.

“Using a combination of automated processes and human oversight, we are taking aggressive steps to remove terrorist content from our platform as soon as we become aware of it. And if we have reason to believe that people are at risk, we will notify the authorities,” a Facebook spokesperson told Reuters. In another response from just a week ago, the social media company did say that it does not agree with a legal obligation on this type of enforcement by companies.

Twitter also told Reuters that this type of content has no place on its website, that it shut down nearly 400,000 accounts in the second half of 2016, and that it is constantly working to improve detection methods.

British Prime Minister Theresa May called out “enough is enough” on Sunday morning after the attacks on London Bridge and neighboring Borough Market. She pledged to work on new counter-terrorism measures for the United Kingdom and she is calling for international agreements to urge major tech companies to regulate the internet more strictly. “We must not give this ideology any safe place to grow.”

So shortly after the attack, it is not yet clear what means the attackers used to communicate with each other and to prepare for their act of terrorism. It is known that more than a dozen arrests have been made in various places in London. The death toll currently stands at seven and 21 victims are still in critical condition in hospital. The perpetrators drove a van into a walking crowd on London Bridge and stabbed passers-by with knives in the Borough Market entertainment area.