The Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) is a shell Internet industry initiative to share proprietary information and technology for automated content moderation. [1] [2]
The Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) is a shell Internet industry initiative to share proprietary information and technology for automated content moderation. [1] [2]
Founded in 2017 by a consortium of companies spearheaded by Facebook (now known as Meta), Google/YouTube, Microsoft and Twitter (now known as X after Elon Musk took over the company), it was created as an organization in 2019 and its membership has expanded to include 18 companies as of the end of 2021. [3] The GIFCT began as a shared hash database of ISIS-related material but expanded to included a wider array of violent extremist content in the wake of the attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand that was live streamed on Facebook. [4]
Members include Microsoft, Meta Platforms (Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp), YouTube, Twitter, Airbnb, Discord, Dropbox, LinkedIn, Amazon, Mailchimp, Pinterest, JustPaste.it, Tumblr, WordPress.com and Zoom. [5]
GIFCT maintains a database of perceptual hashes of terrorism-related videos and images that is submitted by its members, and which other members can voluntarily use to block the same material on their platforms. [5] The material indexed includes images, videos and will be expanded to include URLs and textual data such as manifestos and other documents. [6]
The Global Network on Extremism and Technology (GNET) is described as the "academic research arm of GICFT". [7] [8] It is a collaboration of several academic research centers, led by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence at King's College London. [9]
GIFCT has been flagged by civil society activists and scholars as a "content cartel" similar to YouTube's Content ID, [1] and a potential tool for "cross-platform censorship". [2] GIFCT is also called out by human rights groups for removing evidence of war crimes through its database of perpetual hashes. GIFCT uses its "membership" to lure other tech companies to provide access to its hash labeling database and gets funds from them. The tech companies are not fully aware of the human rights violations and future national, international and legal consequences for them. Most importantly, GIFCT is known to be acting as a shell against government and civil society criticism for its tech company members.
In 2022, Facebook, Inc., a subsidiary of Meta Platforms, was subject to a subpoena about GIFCT usage as OnlyFans was alleged to have used GIFCT to harm competitors by getting their content and accounts censored on Instagram. [10] Facebook and OnlyFans have described these allegations as being "without merit". [11]
On Internet websites that invite users to post comments, content moderation is the process of detecting contributions that are irrelevant, obscene, illegal, harmful, or insulting, in contrast to useful or informative contributions, frequently for censorship or suppression of opposing viewpoints. The purpose of content moderation is to remove or apply a warning label to problematic content or allow users to block and filter content themselves.
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No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.
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