The Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) is an
independent group through which member companies share information to combat
terrorism and violent extremism on their sites.
Zoom, which saw usage explode during the COVID-19 pandemic
but has faced slowing growth in recent months, has come under scrutiny over how
to police content and abuses on its platform.
GIFCT's founding members were Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter
and Alphabet's YouTube.
Its membership has risen to 18 companies with five new
platforms joining this year including home-rental firm Airbnb, social network
Tumblr and online publishing platform WordPress. It said it plans for more in
2022.
Tech companies have long been criticized for failing to curb
violent extremist activity on their platforms, though they also face concerns
over free expression.
GIFCT was created in 2017 under pressure from the US and
European governments after a series of deadly attacks in Paris and Brussels.
It manages a hash-sharing database, where member companies
can share "hashes", unique numerical representations of original
pieces of content that have been removed from their services. Other companies
can use these hashes to identify the same content on their sites and review or
remove the material.
"It is our responsibility to support our users and
protect them against online threats," Josh Parecki, Zoom's associate
general counsel for trust and safety, said in a statement.
"By collaborating with other leaders across the
industry, sharing key learnings and advancing research, we aspire to make the
digital world a safer place for all."
As individuals and companies turned to video-conferencing
apps during COVID-19 lockdown restrictions, Zoom faced high-profile content
moderation issues.
These ranged from abuses like "zoombombing", where
uninvited users crashed others' calls to share hate speech and racist, violent
or pornographic content, to decisions like its cancellation of a virtual event
featuring Leila Khaled, a member of a Palestinian group on the US State
Department's list of terrorist organizations.
GIFCT Executive Director Nicholas Rasmussen said in a
statement it was delighted to add Zoom as its mission "requires we work
with a diverse range of companies ...to develop cross-platform solutions that
render terrorists and violent extremists ineffective across the Internet".
GIFCT has faced criticism from some human and digital rights
advocates over centralized or over-broad censorship, and calls for greater
transparency.
In July, the organization expanded the scope of its
hash-sharing database to include attacker manifestos and other publications and
URLs flagged by the United Nations initiative Tech Against Terrorism. It also
said it would continue to broaden the database to include hashes of audio files
or certain symbols.
GIFCT also said on Wednesday it has designed a new
membership structure based on company revenue, with suggested annual
contributions ranging from $0 to $1 million. It said membership was not
contingent on a company's revenue.
Other members include Meta's Instagram and WhatsApp,
Pinterest, Amazon, chat platform Discord and file-sharing service Dropbox.
Other companies such as Reddit and Snapchat-owner Snap can also access the
hash-sharing database. © Reuters
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