This is a very ongoing issue in the present day. There have been videos from ISIS on the internet which has struck fear in the eyes of many people around the world. Emma Llanso, Shahed Amanullah, Lisl Brunner and Rebecca Mackinnon have a conversation on debunking the many myths and the alternatives on which to build solutions upon. There were 125,000 accounts on Twitter that were threatening or promoting terrorist acts so they were deleted. The U.S. is having meetings between administration and technology companies on what they can do together to prevent these terrorism acts from showing up on their sites. The panelists showed a video of ISIS for those that have not seen one. With the video saying that ISIS is going to take over and we should be scared of them. How do you confront someone like this? Extremism is a social phenomenon.

Some approaches have taken the technological side of how to remove these videos from online. The harder path to take is how to marginalize this message. When you have platforms such as Facebook where the videos are able to go viral and others are able to express themselves through comments and engagement. Instead of taking comments and videos related to ISIS down we need to respect the self expression are the internet does for people.

“What are the risks and concerns for human risks,” Lisl said.

Does removing content from extremist groups on the internet overstep the law of freedom of expression? There are IP addresses that have been blocked that had terrorism on the site. The content that is removed outside the legal process is not actually transparent. ICT mentions that sites are liable and responsible for what their users post on their site, more and more policies have been made regarding this. Eliminating terrorism content from online will not eliminate terrorism efforts, there needs to be action done against it.

There were some women named ISIS that had their Facebook taken down and later reinstated and compensated. The Government of the UK and France are in meetings discussing if not doing enough to regulate your business has to do with the terms of service. For Google, Yahoo and Facebook language of hate speech and violence is in the terms of service but there are not inclusions of terrorism in their services. Should there be? The first amendment and government cannot pass a law that requires companies to sensor this form of expression. Major companies have no information on how much information is being taken down on their site, it is just taken down. Twitter started to police content and report on data of terms and service enforcement. Companies are arguing that counter speech is the way to go.  Facebook is facilitating this through supporting ads and helping companies promote certain words directed towards people as a counter messages. Pressure on companies to police if you don’t censor content properly we will take down the content. Is there a thing as over censorship? In my opinion this type of content should not be taken down but voiced out an put out to the public.

Hate speech needs to be combated with good speech. In times where there is extremist groups there needs to be good speech. Empathy is so key for people.