Twitter, Facebook and Google are testifying on terrorist content and fake news

Facebook, Twitter and Google will be testifying before the House Homeland Security Committee about online terrorist content. The hearing will also look at the spread of misinformation on social media platforms, as reported earlier by Bloomberg Law citing a Democratic committee aide.

The hearing follows the Christchurch mosque shooting being live-streamed on social media including Facebook in March. At the time, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft were asked by the US House Homeland Security Committee to remove the content as quickly as possible.

Facebook confirmed to CNET that it will be testifying. The hearing, called Examining Social Media Companies’ Efforts to Counter Online Terror Content and Misinformation, will see testimony from Monika Bickert, Facebook head of global policy management, Nick Pickles, Twitter global senior strategist for public policy, and Derek Slater, Google global director of information policy.

The hearing will take place on June 26 at 7:00 a.m. PT and can be live streamed on the house committee’s website.

Twitter didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Following the New Zealand terrorist attack, Twitter and Facebook signed the Christchurch Call alongside fellow tech companies Amazon, Microsoft, Daily Motion, Qwant and YouTube, as well as the governments of Canada, Australia, the UK, New Zealand, Germany, France, the European Commission, Indonesia, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Jordan, the Netherlands, Norway, Senegal, Spain and Sweden.

Social media and terrorism

Facebook explains why its AI didn’t catch New Zealand gunman’s livestream
Facebook, Google, Twitter sign ‘Christchurch Call’ to cull terrorist content

The Christchurch Call, led by New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and French President Emmanuel Macron, is a plan to prevent terrorists from uploading extremist content online, and to increase transparency around tech companies’ algorithms and the detection and removal of such content.

The US didn’t sign the call.

As of May 2, Google said it had reviewed over 1 million suspected terrorist videos this year alone already.

The spread of misinformation has also been a hot topic, particularly in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, with deepfakes, fake news and doctored media being spread across social media.

Deepfakes, video forgeries that make people appear to be doing or saying things they didn’t, are the moving-picture equivalent of bogus images created with programs like Photoshop. Deepfake software has made manipulated videos accessible and increasingly harder to detect as fake. One technique enables users to make a deepfake using a single image, such as the Mona Lisa.

Congress is looking to investigate deepfakes following the appearance of doctored videos of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and amid fears that deepfakes could escalate the fake news campaign during the 2020 US presidential race.