Google has released a new free tool to help detect and tackle terrorism on small, community-built platforms.
Known as Heightis the tool built by Google’s dedicated Jigsaw unit, which is charged with detecting extremist content and misinformation on the Internet.
Tech Against Terrorism, a UN-backed online counter-terrorism group, is working with Jigsaw to develop the counter-terrorism tool.
Small platforms flooded with extremist content
Small online communities often struggle to combat the distribution and sharing of extremist content due to a lack of dedicated regulations and resources.
That’s why Google released Altitude as a free service that small communities can use, as they often don’t have deep enough funds to pay for dedicated anti-terrorism tools.
Content created by extremist groups is identified through the use of image hashes, which are merged into the online database. These digital fingerprints then help identify extremist content on small platforms.
The Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism – a group founded in 2017 by leading names such as YouTube, Microsoft, Facebook and to set. .
Speak with Wired, the CEO of Jigsaw Yasmin Green, said: “Islamic State and other terrorist groups did not give up on the internet just because they no longer had the megaphone of their social media platforms. They went somewhere else. They found this opportunity to host content on file hosting sites or other websites, small and medium platforms.
“Those platforms did not welcome terrorist content, but they still hosted it – and actually a lot of it.”
Altitude can be integrated directly into the backend of any website and can then be used to check whether content has been labeled as extremist or created by terrorist groups. The content is verified by Tech Against Terrorism’s Terrorist Content Analytics Platform, which hosts the database of designated terrorist content.