Growing pressure from European governments has meant progress has been made by companies in significantly boosting their resources dedicated to help take down extremist content as quickly as possible. If the EU is not satisfied with the further progress on the removal of extremist content by technology companies, which are primarily based in the US, it said it will come forward with legislation next year to force the issue. A group of technology companies pooling resources to combat extremist content called the Global Internet Forum – a group which includes Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube – said that progress had been made with Europol. “It is feasible to reduce the time it takes to remove content to a few hours,” said Dimitris Avramopoulos, EU home affairs commissioner. “Instead, what the EU Internet Forum should aim to deliver are concrete, industry-wide policies on blocking or rapidly removing illegal content and consistent enforcement of those policies,” said David Ibsen, executive director of the CEP.

Source: The Guardian December 07, 2017 09:45 UTC