YouTube unveiled its latest weapon in its effort to combat terrorist propaganda on its site: redirection.

Users who search for such content will now be directed to videos that show victims of terrorism and clerics refuting violent religious narratives.

Social media giants such as Facebook, Twitter and Google have been rushing to respond to the wave of hate speech and terrorist propaganda flooding their platforms where it can be accessed by people with a penchant for violent behavior.

“When people search for certain keywords on YouTube, we will display a playlist of videos debunking violent extremist recruiting narratives,” YouTube announced in a blog post last week explaining the new system. “This early product integration of the Redirect Method on YouTube is our latest effort to provide more resources and more content that can help change minds of people at risk of being radicalized.”

YouTube, which is owned by Google’s parent company, already prohibits users from uploading videos that include violent or racist content – such as jihadi and white supremacist propaganda – but users circumvent the video sharing site’s rules by overwhelming the site with hundreds of links. Propaganda videos are also uploaded as “unlisted,” which means that the videos are hidden from searches, but easily posted on social media or disseminated with direct links to the video.

Major companies, such as AT&T, Verizon and Johnson & Johnson, pulled advertising from YouTube in March as a long-standing dispute about the site’s approach to policing offensive videos boiled over, according to Adweek.

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But some digital privacy experts raised questions about the new effort by YouTube and the growing role tech companies are playing in determining what users see on the internet.

Jeffrey Chester , executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, said the redirection effort might be an effective tool for combating propaganda, but he’s concerned about the role advertisers may have played getting the system implemented.

“The advertisers took advantage of this controversy over hate speech to assert their interests over how Google and Facebook operate,” Chester said. “Independent sites – sites that fund the controversial ideas – know that there’s a slippery slope here.

“The danger here is that Google and Facebook are making decisions about how the future of the digital media system operates without public oversight and accountability,” he added.

The Redirect Method was developed by Jigsaw, a company owned by Alphabet, Google’s parent company, to target ISIS-focused videos in particular, according to YouTube. Jigsaw says the method was developed with research partners who interviewed ISIS defectors and explored the major narratives that the group promoted for recruitment.

Those narratives include ideas that ISIS is an unstoppable military force, one that has been legitimized by Islamic faith and that leads to effective government rule that improves lives.


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