Macron Calls for Expanding Internet Monitoring to Counter Extremism

French President urges Internet and social media companies to step up their monitoring efforts to combat terrorist recruiting online.

UNITED NATIONS (Sputnik) — Internet and social media companies must step up their monitoring efforts to combat terrorist recruiting online, French President Emmanuel Macron said at a forum at the UN.

"We have to have propaganda here," Macron said on Wednesday. "It's not official propaganda but operators can prepare positive models and imaginary landscapes which are identical with our values."

Internet content promoting hatred, extremism and terrorist motivation had to be identified and purged from the system within an hour of it being posted, macron told the forum. He said the capabilities to do this already existed.

Google senior vice president and general counsel Kent Walker said four Social media giant corporations, Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube were committed to working together to crack down on what he described as "problematic content" online.

Twitter in recent months suspended almost a million accounts for problematic content promoting terrorism and extremism, Walker said.