New York (AFP)

In the heat of criticism for several months, Facebook announced Monday strengthen its fight against extremist content on the Internet by creating, alongside other technology giants like Google and Twitter, an independent structure.

Since the Christchurch attack in New Zealand last March, the world's first social network has stepped up efforts to combat "hate and extremist" content.

Facebook then took 17 minutes to interrupt the video broadcast live of a white supremacist, who had filmed while attacking a mosque, killing 51 Muslim faithful.

After "the call of Christchurch to take action" in May, supported among others by the New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and French President Emmanuel Macron, Facebook and its partners announced to have set up a new organization in margin of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

Ms. Ardern and Facebook number two, Sheryl Sandberg, were to speak Monday night to formalize the launch of this initiative.

This will take over from a consortium, the Global Internet Forum Counter Terrorism (GIFCT), created in 2017 by Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and Google (via YouTube). The Seattle-based giant Amazon as well as the LinkedIn (Microsoft-owned) and WhatsApp (Facebook) platforms have joined the redesigned structure.

This new version will be intended to "thwart the increasingly sophisticated attempts of terrorists and violent extremists to use digital platforms," ​​according to a statement received by AFP.

The structure will have an independent staff and an executive director, whose name has not been disclosed. Non-governmental actors will lead an advisory committee.

The governments of the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand and Japan will also have a consultative role, as will experts from the United Nations and the European Union.

- Work with the police -

Last Tuesday, Facebook announced that it had called on police on both sides of the Atlantic to educate its artificial intelligence tools, to stop video broadcasts of live extremist attacks on its platform.

The London police will help from October to allow the social network to better train its artificial intelligence tools to quickly detect these contents and delete them.

After putting a lot of resources into combating the use of its network by organizations like the Islamic State group, Facebook has recently focused on white supremacism, whose followers have been responsible for many killings in recent years. , especially in the United States.

The network claims to have banned 200 white supremacist organizations and broadened its definition of what constitutes a "terrorist" organization by calling in experts. "The new definition remains focused on the behavior, not the ideology of these groups", but it is now broadened to "acts of violence in particular directed against civilians with the intention of compelling and intimidating them".

Facebook has also expanded the missions of a team of 350 experts in law enforcement, national security, anti-terrorism, but also academics specializing in the study of the phenomenon of radicalization to curb the efforts of people and organizations that call for violence or commit violent acts that impact the real world "and not just online.

© 2019 AFP