Department Of Justice Recruits Social Media Firms To Fight “Online Radicalization”
By Derrick Broze
ActivistPost.com
MARCH 5, 2016
For the third time since December 2015, the Obama administration has met with social media companies to discuss fighting the spread of online extremism.
On February 23, the U.S. Department of Justice met with officials from Facebook, Twitter, and Google to discuss how online social media firms can take the lead in disrupting online radicalization.
Seamus Hughes, the deputy director of George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, attended the meeting and told Reuters it was “a recognition that the government is ill-positioned and ill-equipped to counter ISIS online.”
George Selim, director of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) office for “countering violent extremism” activities, said the federal government is not equipped to push back against “online recruitment efforts” from terror groups. Selim said the objective is to help “communities and young people to amplify their own messages.”
Reuters reports that the U.S. government is also investing in “counter-narrative” programs “at schools and community groups.” Another program, funded by Facebook and the U.S. government, involved “peer-to-peer (P2P) college courses that teach students to create their own anti-militant messaging.”
A senior FBI official told Reuters that the bureau works with many other non-governmental organizations on spreading “counter-narrative” programs.
The Rest…HERE
