In her address to the UN General Assembly, the British PM, Theresa May will issue a terror content warning. She is expected to tell the tech firms that they need to do more to remove the material promoting extremism. She is supposed to meet with the representatives of Microsoft, Facebook, and Twitter.
Stern Terror Content Warning to Big IT Giants
The British PM will ask the search engines and social media networks to overcome the problem of extremist content. Furthermore, experts believe the terror content warning may request the IT firms to take such material down in just two hours. Theresa May has already said that the IT companies need to end the safe havens online available to the extremist elements.
Furthermore, the Ministers in the UK Government want tech firms to limit end-to-end encryption. They argue that by restricting the end-to-end encryption, third parties would be able to intercept the messages. They believe it will help reduce the spread of the hatred material online.
What More Will Theresa May Say on Terror Content Warning?
The inside sources claim that she would acknowledge the progress made by the tech firms. However, she is expected to push the IT companies to improve their ability to filter such hateful material online. Theresa May will ask the tech companies to build new artificial intelligence solutions for automatically recognizing and removing such material. Furthermore, she would urge them to find mechanisms to ensure the hate material eventually does not appear at all.
Other countries including France and Italy are expected to join Theresa May in issuing terror content warning. They would also press the tech firms to remove any such content with an hour or two of its appearance online. The internet companies will be given one month to show progress, and the Ministers of these countries will review progress on 20th October, in 30 days’ time.
Response of the Tech Firms on the Terror Content Warning
The internet companies responded with their arguments and limitations.
Google’s representative says that the firm has already spent hundreds of millions of pounds to overcome this problem. However, the company’s management believes that the users and the government also need to help it in overcoming the problem.
Facebook and Twitter
These two leading social media networking sites have already said that they are doing their best to overcome the offensive material online.
YouTube
Similarly, YouTube also receives hundreds of thousands of reports to take down content. However, it can manage to take down 98% of all the reported content.
Criticism of Theresa May’s Plan to Overcome Offensive Content
The British Government wants to weaken the encryption. A campaign group claims these measures will facilitate the extremist elements to exploit the vulnerabilities. Similarly, some tech experts also say that these actions will make internet unsafe for other people who use it on a routine basis. Furthermore, they believe these measures may not necessarily help solve the problem.
Another argument suggests that by taking these steps Theresa May will push these extremist organizations into the dark web. Therefore, they would become even harder to detect their online activity. Furthermore, the argument also states that social media websites are not causing hatred but the people who are abusing these tools.
Many countries are battling with the removal of the malicious online content. For example, in Pakistan, the PM had to ask authorities to remove blasphemous content from social media. It is an ongoing battle in which government, users, and technology firms will have to join hands to overcome the issue.
