This is the latest in a string of attempts by Facebook and other technology companies to avoid accountability for the spread of misinformation, violent extremist content and incitements to terror on their platforms.
In response, last month, an international summit was held in Bergen, Norway, to commemorate the 77 victims of the terror attacks in Oslo and Utøya on July 22, 2011. Since then, radical-right extremism has become an increasing transnational threat, with a 320% rise in the number of global attacks in the last five years.
At the summit, closed-door workshops, discussions and Q&A sessions facilitated open and robust dialogue among leading global stakeholders committed to fighting radical-right terrorism and extremism. These included representatives from Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Twitter, the British, US, New Zealand and Norwegian governments, the UK’s communication regulator OFCOM, the Global Internet Forum to
UN, the EU and more.
The “22 July at Ten” organizers published the Bergen Plan of Action, outlining five steps for a collaborative, multi-stakeholder approach among governments, tech platforms and civil society organizations aimed at helping tackle the spread of violent extremist content and mitigating the rising rates of online radicalization.
While many researchers no longer subscribe to the technologically deterministic view that social media is the sole cause of radical-right extremism, there is evidence that it does, in fact, rapidly accelerate the process. An internal Facebook report from 2016 found that 64% of people who joined an extremist group on the platform did so because the company’s algorithm suggested it. This explains why many online communities, including white and male supremacist groups, can act as gateways to more extreme groups and ideologies.
The first step of the Bergen Plan of Action calls for a tougher and more comprehensive approach to countering violent extremism through an approach that involves the whole of society, including governments, the corporate sector and civil society organizations.
Sessions with the US Department of State raised valid concerns regarding how this would work in practice, not given tech companies’ well-documented resistance to publicizing information about their algorithms and transparency in general. The seemingly impenetrable black-box nature of their recommendation engines has been used to relinquish responsibility from their role in spreading extreme content.
While much is yet to be resolved, the Bergen Plan of Action has the potential to provide vital independent, peer-reviewed research, allowing internet users to make better decisions about the information they consume and share online. The fourth step of the Bergen Plan of Action recommends establishing a global network of civil society organizations in order to facilitate sharing methods for tackling all stages of online radicalization. Specialist tools such as Moonshot’s Redirect Method could be used to identify and safeguard vulnerable individuals, directing them toward safer content and trained counselors.
A further focus of the conference was on the role of content moderation. Historically, tech companies have repeatedly abdicated responsibility for removing radical-right content. Social media platforms received fresh criticism after their failure to remove the extremist messaging that helped incite the violence at the US Capitol on January 6.
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