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    Tech Innovation

    GIFCT invests in the development and distribution of groundbreaking technological solutions to support member companies committed to preventing terrorist and violent extremists from exploiting their platforms while protecting human rights.

    Hash-sharing database

    In 2017, the founding members of GIFCT spearheaded a shared, safe and secure industry database of “perceptual hashes” of known images and videos- produced by terrorist entities on the United Nations designated terrorist groups lists- which GIFCT members had removed from their services.

    Taxonomy Expansion

    At the beginning of 2021, GIFCT  launched a multi-stakeholder effort to engage a wide range of experts on expanding the reach and impact of our hash-sharing database’s taxonomy in order to respond to terrorist content online across the ideological spectrum. We believe that our work must be complementary and mutually-reinforced with human rights and fundamental freedoms, starting with the material we recognize as terrorist content online. This six-month project resulted in a compilation report from international experts that will help shape and inform our strategy for thoughtful, deliberate, and practical broadening of our taxonomy framework over time.

    GIFCT Taxonomy Expansion

    Expanding the taxonomy through this process means we can empower our members to combat a wider range of terrorist activity, address the Islamist extremist-bias that currently exists in the larger counterterrorism field, and remain diligent to impacts on the human rights of those most vulnerable in this context: both victims of terrorism and violent extremism and victims of efforts to address terrorism and violent extremism.

    We will initially expand the hash-sharing database’s taxonomy with three new hashed categories, prioritized based on feedback from global experts, our Independent Advisory Committee, and our member companies about how the threat of this content manifests online:

    1. Manifestos from terrorist and violent extremist attackers in PDF form;
    2. Terrorist publications that use specific branding and logos for the organization in PDF form; and
    3. URLs identified by Tech Against Terrorism as where specific terrorist content exists that are often shared and amplified on other platforms

    We will continue working to expand the reach and impact of the hash-sharing database’s taxonomy in order to respond to terrorist content online across the ideological spectrum while also working to bring greater transparency to this specific area of our work.

    URL Sharing

    Terrorist content is increasingly shared on one platform with a link to content hosted on another platform. Companies only have jurisdiction to remove the primary source content from what is hosted on their services, meaning they can remove a post, but the source link and hosted content remains intact on the third party platform. In January 2019, GIFCT began a program to implement a link-sharing system of its own.