Tech Titans Promise to Do a Better Job of Fighting Extremist Content

Previous complaints about the complexity of the task appear to be crumbling, at least a little.

Last month, British prime minister Theresa May called for tech firms “to go further and faster in automating the detection and removal of terrorist content online.” At the time, Alphabet’s general counsel said that would be a struggle, because the “haystacks are unimaginably large and the needles are both very small and constantly changing.”

Now, something’s changed. At least that’s the news coming out of this week’s G7 talks in Ischia, Italy. The talks, which involve officials from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the U.S., appear to have included a session with representatives from Google, Facebook, and Twitter. And, according to the BBC, the tech firms  agreed to “do more to remove extremist content within hours of it being posted.”