Microsoft To Fight Terrorism Online

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Microsoft has finally closed ranks with other tech industry giants and committed to fighting terrorism on the internet after admitting that “terrorist content” has been posted to its online services, including Outlook webmail and Xbox Live.

“Terrorism is one of the truly urgent issues of our time,” said Microsoft. “We are committed to doing our part to help address the use of technology to promote it or to recruit to its causes.”

Microsoft hasn’t detailed how exactly it plans to combat terrorism, but the Redmond, California-based giant has said that it will not be censoring its Bing search engine.

“We will remove links to terrorist-related content from Bing only when that takedown is required of search providers under local law,” the company said.

In addition, Microsoft plans to engage with nongovernmental organisations to tailor “alternative narratives” in search results.

“We’re hopeful that these upcoming collaborations will help protect troubled individuals from heading down a path toward violence.”

Facebook, Google, and even secure messaging app Telegram have already enacted anti-terror policies to monitor and take down terrorist-affiliated content, prefiguring Microsoft by a wide margin.

Facebook, for example, has dedicated an entire team to track and regulate terrorist content.

“One thing we’ve heard time and time again from academics is if you want to find terrorists online or those supporting terrorist ideologies, the best thing is to find their friends. So when we become aware of an account supporting terrorism, we look at associated accounts so we can remove them immediately,” said Monika Bickert, head of global policy management at Facebook.

As part of its anti-terrorism activity, Microsoft has announced funding to Dartmouth College professor Hany Farid to develop technology to scan media files (such as images, documents, audio and video) to identify terrorism-related material.