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Photo: Getty Images
Google. Fighting ISIS online.
Photo: Getty Images

Google takes on ISIS

A Google tech incubator that aims to counter violent extremism worldwide has developed technology that could redirect users who type pro-Islamic State phrases into search engines to anti-extremist messages.

The internet is one of the primary recruiting tools of the Islamic State (IS/ISIS/ISIL). The global terrorist organization uses the world wide web to spread extremist Islamic propaganda, and to encourage young people to join its fight for control of various regions of the Middle East – mostly in Iraq and Syria. However, the world’s most prominent internet search engine is now stepping up to fight back.

 

 

A Google-run technology incubator named Jigsaw, which aims to combat security threats globally and fight against extremism, has developed technology that would allow the redirection of users to anti-extremist messages if they search for pro-ISIS terms.

 

The Islamic State uses the internet as a recruiting tool. (Archive photo)
The Islamic State uses the internet as a recruiting tool. (Archive photo)

 

A trial run of the new Jigsaw innovation, which took place over eight weeks in the January-March 2016 period, reached over 320,000 people who searched for one or more word - out of a list of about 1,000 – which is considered to be ISIS-connected. These include, but are not limited to, names of structures in ISIS-controlled territory and slogans related to the Islamic state. Users who were flagged by the system were shown search results, as well as ads that included anti-terrorism links and videos. The project didn’t include the uploading of new anti-ISIS messages to the web, but instead used existing content. So far, the Jigsaw project has included several dozen ads in English and Arabic.

 

Jigsaw’s initiative isn’t the first of its kind. The US State Department promoted a series of anti Islamic-extremism web videos on popular video site YouTube in 2013 called Think Again Turn Away; social network Twitter has suspended 235,000 accounts suspected of promoting extremist content in the past six months. These steps have been encouraged by the White House, which came out in January and called for large internet companies such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Dropbox, Microsoft, Twitter, and YouTube to do more in order to fight the spreading of extremist terrorist organization content on social media.

 

 


פרסום ראשון: 09.09.16, 18:09
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