By Elizabeth Culliford
(Reuters) – Video-conferencing platform Zoom has joined a counterterrorism organization formed by major U.S. tech companies including Meta Platforms Inc, formerly known as Facebook, and Microsoft Corp, the group said on Wednesday.
The move marks the latest expansion of the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT), an independent group through which member companies share information to combat terrorism and violent extremism on their sites.
Zoom Video Communications Inc, which saw usage explode during the COVID-19 pandemic but has faced slowing growth in recent months, has come under scrutiny over how to police content and abuses on its platform.
GIFCT, which has said it wants to broaden its member companies, added five new platforms this year including home-rental giant Airbnb, social network Tumblr and online publishing platform WordPress. It now has 18 members and said it plans for more companies to join in 2022.
Tech companies have long been criticized for failing to curb violent extremist activity on their platforms, though they also face concerns over free expression.
GIFCT was created in 2017 under pressure from U.S. and European governments after a series of deadly attacks in Paris and Brussels. Its founding members were Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and Alphabet’s YouTube.
The group manages a hash-sharing database, where member companies can share “hashes,” unique numerical representations of original pieces of content that have been removed from their services. Other companies can use these hashes to identify the same content on their sites and review or remove the material.
“It is our responsibility to support our users and protect them against online threats,” said Josh Parecki, Zoom’s associate general counsel for trust and safety, in a statement. “By collaborating with other leaders across the industry, sharing key learnings and advancing research, we aspire to make the digital world a safer place for all.”
As individuals and companies turned to video-conferencing apps during COVID-19 lockdown restrictions, Zoom faced high-profile content moderation issues.
These ranged from abuses like “zoombombing,” where uninvited users crashed others’ calls to share hate speech and racist, violent or pornographic content, to decisions like its cancellation of a virtual event featuring Leila Khaled, a member of a Palestinian group on the U.S. State Department’s list of terrorist organizations.
GIFCT’s Executive Director Nicholas Rasmussen said in a statement it was delighted to add Zoom as its mission “requires we work with a diverse range of companies…to develop cross-platform solutions that render terrorists and violent extremists ineffective across the internet.”
GIFCT has faced criticism from some human and digital rights advocates over centralized or over-broad censorship, and calls for greater transparency.
In July, the organization expanded the scope of its hash-sharing database to include attacker manifestos and other publications and URLs flagged by the United Nations initiative Tech Against Terrorism. It also said it would continue to broaden the database to include hashes of audio files or certain symbols.
GIFCT also said on Wednesday it has designed a new membership structure based on company revenue, with suggested annual contributions ranging from $0 to $1 million. It said membership was not contingent on a company’s revenue.
The group’s members also include Reddit, Snapchat-owner Snap, Verizon Communications and file-sharing service Dropbox.
(Reporting by Elizabeth Culliford in Birmingham, England; Editing by Kenneth Li and Lisa Shumaker)
