Blog
Tech Against Terrorism’s Online Regulation Series: Ireland
January 12, 2022
By Tech Against Terrorism Since the 2000s Ireland has emerged as the preferred destination for many leading tech companies, and for many members of the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) – including all founding members: Meta, Twitter, and Microsoft1 – to establish their EU headquarters. This concentration of tech headquarters in Dublin places ...
Blog
Is Big Tech Ready to Tackle Extremism? The Bergen Plan of Action
December 1, 2021
By Maisie Draper A news story that falsely claimed that the COVID-19 vaccine caused the death of an American doctor was the most viewed article on Facebook in the US for the first three months of 2021. Instead of going public about the platform promoting such misinformation, Facebook held back on publishing the report until The ...
Blog
Jacinda Ardern Calls for ‘Ethical Algorithms’ to Combat Online Extremism. What This Means
May 26, 2021
By Nathalie Collins New Zealand’s prime minister Jacinda Ardern has called for “ethical algorithms” to help stop online radicalisation. She made her call at the second summit of the “Christchurch Call” for action to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online. The first Christchurch Call summit was convened by Ardern and French president Emmanuel Macron ...
Blog
Innocent Users Have the Most to Lose in the Rush to Address Extremist Speech Online
October 31, 2019
By Jillian C. York and Eliot Harmon Internet Companies Must Adopt Consistent Rules and Transparent Moderation Practices Big online platforms tend to brag about their ability to filter out violent and extremist content at scale, but those same platforms refuse to provide even basic information about the substance of those removals. How do these platforms ...
Blog
How Big Tech Designs its Own Rules of Ethics to Avoid Scrutiny and Accountability
June 20, 2019
By David Watts Data ethics is now a cause célèbre. “Digital ethics and privacy” shot into research and advisory company Gartner’s top ten strategic technology trends for 2019. Before that it barely raised a mention. In the past year governments, corporations and policy and technology think tanks have published data ethics guides. An entire cohort ...
News
VOX-Pol Participation in the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism
December 5, 2017
The Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism held an event this morning, 6 December 2017, at Google’s Brussels’ offices.  The event featured representatives from GIFCT founder companies, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter, along with the EU Commission, EUROPOL, ICT4Peace, CDT, and others.  The first panel discussion and Q&A included stakeholders from agencies engaged in the ...
News
Research Finds Social Media Disruption Impacting on Islamic State Propaganda
August 15, 2017
In one 24-hour period, 65% of Twitter accounts tweeting out-links to IS propaganda were suspended within 17 hours Focus of online disruption on IS allows other jihadi groups to outpace them on social media VOX-Pol researchers from Dublin City University, together with colleagues from the University of Sussex, have found that the social media platform, ...
News
VOX-Pol Upcoming Participation in RAN Workshop on the Civil Society Empowerment Programme
March 14, 2017
On 15-16 March, VOX-Pol Programme Manager, Lisa McInerney, will participate in the EU’s Radicalisation Awareness Network’s (RAN) Civil Society Empowerment Programme’s kick-off workshop. The Civil Society Empowerment Programme (CSEP) is an initiative produced by the European Commission with the support of partners in the Internet industry; Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Microsoft. CSEP brings together internet ...