This project conducted interviews and fieldwork with tech company employees who oversee content policies on extremism and terrorism in Europe and North America. These interviews were facilitated through a six-month secondment with the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT), a consortium of thirty-two tech company members that share insights and best practices to prevent terrorists and violent extremists from exploiting online platforms. The secondment was based in GIFCT’s offices in London and Washington D.C. which provided access and resources to tech company employees collaborating on GIFCT programs. Alongside these formal interviews and attendance at meetings with GIFCT members and partners, the project included additional fieldwork with participation at the Trust and Safety Research Conference at Stanford University, the GIFCT side event hosted during UN General Assembly high-level week, a side event on algorithms and interventions during the Christchurch Call Leaders’ Summit, and closed-door workshops and private briefings hosted by tech companies.
The aim of interviews and fieldwork was to assess how tech companies understand, identify, and respond to (far-right) extremist and terrorist content on their platforms, and the operational dynamics of policy and moderation teams. The interviews highlighted changing content policy and moderation practices, shifts in resource allocation, expertise and knowledge sharing, as well as adaptation dilemmas, in response to increased global far-right activity on platforms. While conducting interviews and fieldwork with tech company employees, a clear and significant finding was that tech companies rarely operate in isolation, but that decision making practices encompass an ecosystem of stakeholders who are involved in various stages of content policy development, implementation, and enforcement. This includes academics and researchers, independent platform advisory councils, and industry partners in the private sector (within content policy development); industry partners and global governance institutions (content policy implementation); and government bodies, regulatory authorities, law enforcement, industry partners, independent platform advisory councils, and civil society (content policy enforcement, or content moderation). Consequently, this project broadens the discussion of content policy and moderation from a platform-user level of interaction, to understanding how these function within a platform governance framework that includes multi-stakeholders across the private sector, governments, and civil society.
Results of MAFNET were disseminated at academic conferences and seminars such as the Dimensions of Right-Wing Extremism in Europe conference and Association of Internet Researchers annual conference, and through institutional networks such as the Center for Research on Extremism, the Far Right Analysis Network, the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, and the Global Network on Extremism and Technology. Planned scientific publications include a co-authored journal article with the supervisor on the professionalization of the Trust and Safety industry, and a monograph with an academic press.
