Automated content moderation and takedown
Social media channels and webpages that host multi-media content fight against terrorist misuse of their services in different ways. In many ways, how they do so depends on how terrorists misuse their platforms. For example, a website that enables the sharing of large files may undertake a different approach than a messaging app that allows for encrypted communications.
One well-known response by social media companies to tackle terrorist and extremist content is “deplatforming”. As defined by the Oxford Dictionary, deplatforming is “the action or practice of preventing someone holding views regarded as unacceptable or offensive from contributing to a forum or debate, especially by blocking them on a particular website”. It is often used as a response by social media companies to repeat violations of the terms of service or the community standards of their platforms. Another approach often used is a technique known as “shadow-banning”.82 This refers to the content being either deleted entirely or having its visibility significantly limited, without the user that published the content being made aware.
Such tools and approaches are, naturally, not without controversy. Notably, concern has arisen with respect to the possibility of subjective, disparate, and potentially biased enforcement by different platforms resulting from the absence of internationally agreed upon definitions of what constitutes terrorism and violent extremism.83 Moreover, with limited transparency regarding the tools and approaches used by social media companies and the absence of details regarding their implementation, it is also difficult to really assess their effectiveness. In fact, the effectiveness of deplatforming is quite debated,84 as it may in fact increase grievances and provide victimization narratives for banned
users and communities. It may also contribute to encouraging the migration of such individuals from well-regulated large platforms with considerable content moderation resources to less regulated smaller platforms and niche services, whose capabilities to address such challenges online may be more limited. The resulting fragmented landscape can, in fact, compromise the collective efforts to combat the problem in general.
It is pertinent to note that it is also not always straightforward to disrupt terrorist activities by simply deleting an account or limiting the visibility of content. For instance, the perpetrators of the Christchurch terrorist attack in 2019
live-streamed the attack – an innovation that presented new challenges for content moderators. Although Facebook successfully removed the original video 12 minutes after the recording ended, the video went viral and, in the 24 hours
that followed, there were as many as 1.5 million attempts to upload copies of the video across the globe.85 Christchurch unequivocally demonstrated the need of being able to not only delete accounts and limit the visibility of content, but also to be able to operate across different platforms in order to prevent the strategic distribution of terrorist content in a timely manner.86 In the aftermath of Christchurch, the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) created a shared industry database of hashes of terrorist propaganda with the intention of supporting coordinated takedown of such content across platforms, while adhering to data privacy and retention policies.
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Countering terrorist and violent extremist narratives,
While removing terrorist and violent extremist content from the Internet or social media may, to a certain degree, be
effective in preventing the spread of harmful narratives, it is exceptionally controversial and raises serious human rights concerns.
Websites may be removed from the net if they're suspected of "promoting terrorism"
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Posted by Gwin Ru 
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