In an effort to strengthen its stance against terrorism, Facebook today has vowed to strengthen measures through its platform to counter possible terror plots. The social media platform has started to track down accounts that may be related to extremists groups.
Different governments from across the globe have been putting the pressure on technology companies to remove any possible material that may seem to be a terrorist propaganda. In response, Facebook has immediately taken heed of the call as the most powerful social media platform today.
In a blog post published by Facebook, it has underscored that it has been using artificial intelligence to scan texts, videos, and images that may be related to terrorists' string of bogus accounts.
"We want to find terrorist content immediately, before people in our community have seen it", writes Facebook. "We know we can do better at using technology—and specifically artificial intelligence—to stop the spread of terrorist content on Facebook".
Facebook had recently been in the hot water for being loose in its security that the Islamic State used it to spread its radical extremist ideology and stirs people to carry out acts of rebellion.
Earlier this week, the governments of the UK and France have propelled joint campaign to prevent the internet from becoming a hub for terrorists and offenders. The campaign is looking into imposing punishment for companies who fail to take down certain contents.
In an interview with the BBC, Facebook's director of global policy management Monica Bickert stresses out its stance versus terrorism. She says, "We want to be very open with our community about what we're trying to do to make sure that Facebook is a really hostile environment for terror groups".
Recently, Facebook has hired around 3,000 more people to man its ongoing campaign to track down possible contents related to terrorist groups. One of the technologies it has been using enables to match images of the terrorists which can be seen in uploaded photos and videos.
In terms of using AI in scouring the platform for possible texts praising or supporting extremists, Facebook uses its algorithm to detect those. "Our technology is going to continue to evolve just as we see the terror threat continue to evolve online", says Bickert.
