Zoom Joins GIFCT To Together Fight Terrorism Content On Their Platform

Video conferencing platform Zoom has joined the counterterrorism organization. (photo; doc. pixabay)

JAKARTA - Video conferencing platform Zoom has joined the counterterrorism organization formed by major US technology companies, including Meta Platforms Inc, formerly known as Facebook, and Microsoft Corp. This statement comes from the company's sources Wednesday, December 15.

The Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) is an independent group whose member companies share information on fighting terrorism and extremism and violence on their websites. GIFCT's founding members are Alphabet's Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, and YouTube.

Zoom Video Communications Inc, which experienced a usage boom during the COVID-19 pandemic but has faced slowing growth in recent months, has come under scrutiny for the way it monitors content and abuse on its platform.

GIFCT's membership has grown to 18 companies with five new platforms joining this year including rental company Airbnb, social network Tumblr and online publishing platform WordPress. GIFCT plans to continue adding members in 2022.

Tech companies have long been criticized for failing to curb extremist and violent activity on their platforms. On the other hand, they also face concerns over freedom of expression.

GIFCT was created in 2017 under pressure from US and European governments after a series of deadly terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels.

This group maintains a hash-sharing database, where member companies can share "hashes", unique numerical representations of chunks of original content that have been removed from their service. Other companies may also use this hash to identify the same content on their sites and review or remove that material.

"It is our responsibility to support users of our platform and protect the user community from online threats," Josh Parecki, Zoom's associate general counsel for trust and security, said in a statement.

"By collaborating with other leaders across the industry, such as sharing key learnings and advancing research, we aspire to make the digital world a safer place for everyone," added Parecki.

As individuals and companies turn to video conferencing apps during the COVID-19 lockdown, Zoom faces the problem of moderation of high-profile content. They seem unable to censor anything that happens on their platform.

Common abuses on the platform include "zoombombing," where uninvited users tamper with other people's conversations to spread hate speech and racist, violent or pornographic content. There was even the cancellation of a virtual event featuring Leila Khaled, a member of a Palestinian group in the US who is on the State Department's list of members of a terrorist organization.

GIFCT's Executive Director, Nicholas Rasmussen, said in a statement, quoted by Reuters, that it was pleased to add Zoom because of GIFCT's mission which "requires us to work with diverse companies ... to develop cross-platform solutions that render terrorists and violent extremists ineffective in Internet".

GIFCT has faced criticism from some human and digital rights advocates for its centralized or too broad censorship, and has called for greater transparency. This creates a dilemma because censorship of content is considered to limit freedom, but without censorship, harmful content can emerge so freely.

In July, the organization expanded the scope of its hash-sharing database to include attacker manifestos and other publications and URLs tagged by the United Nations initiative, Tech Against Terrorism. They also say they will continue to expand the database to include hashes of specific audio files or symbols.

GIFCT also said last Wednesday that it had designed a new membership structure based on the company's revenue, with suggested annual contributions ranging from 0 to $1 million. But they also stated that the membership was not dependent on the company's income.

Other members include Instagram and WhatsApp Meta, Pinterest, Amazon.com, chat platform Discord, and file-sharing service Dropbox. Other companies like Reddit and the owners of Snapchat Snap can also access these hash-sharing databases.