"Isis is having a viral moment on social media and the countervailing viewpoints are nowhere near strong enough to oppose them. Isis, in particular, has been putting up footage that is inhuman and atrocious. We are still seeing about two or three of these beheadings each week," Google’s Policy Strategy Director Victoria Grand said at the Cannes Lions festival on Tuesday, as quoted by the Guardian.
According to the company’s legal chief David Drummond, the militants use the power of community to great effect.
"The challenge for us is to strike this balance between allowing people to be educated about the dangers and the violence of this group. But not allowing ourselves to become a distribution channel for this horrible, but very newsworthy, terrorist propaganda," according to Grand.
Grand stated that the militants’ use of the Internet is not just, and called on the advertising and marketing executives to populate YouTube with content to combat Islamic State propaganda.
Islamic State has taken over large parts of Syria and Iraq, and has an extensive online propaganda campaign to recruit new fighters from all around the world.
The group regularly posts videos of the executions of its victims online. In April, the group uploaded a video of the shooting and beheading of Christians in Libya, as well as of Iraqi doctors who refused to treat the militants. The group’s execution videos also frequently feature foreign journalists and aid workers, and the killings are often carried out by children.
