Yahoo News If you Google ‘UK Muslim spokesperson', you get a picture of radical preacher Anjem Choudary
A former head of UK counter-terrorism has hit out at social media algorithms, saying it is a “disgrace” that a google search for ‘British Muslim spokesman’ leads you to radical hate preacher Anjem Choudary.
Sir Mark Rowley said social media companies are still not doing enough to battle the spread of extremist propaganda and their progress is “completely insufficient”.
The former Assistant Commissioner for Specialist Operations of the Metropolitan Police Service was speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme in the wake of the terror attacks in Sri Lanka that left more than 200 people dead.
Sir Mark said more needs to be done to address the way extremist propaganda is “propagating” through the world.
“I think the issue is now that because it’s open source, because it’s spread through propaganda, the seeds of extremist propaganda are scattered to the winds of the internet,” he said.
“Those can land in all parts of the world, in individual minds, or in local groupings and grab on to local grievances, as perhaps has happened in Sri Lanka where you’ve got a Muslim group with local grievances... and they’ve hooked onto Isis propaganda perhaps and probably been influenced by them in their choice of targets.”
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Asked whether he agrees that social media giants should be doing more to address the way their algorithms deal with extremist material, he said: “The algorithms are designed to push us towards contentious material because that feeds their bottom line in terms of revenue through advertising.
“The contentious is often the extremis, so they are pushing readers towards extremist material.
“If you google ‘British Muslim spokesman’, you get Anjem Choudary, that’s a disgrace.”
Sir Mark said he backed the stance by the Home Affairs Committee, which this week criticised social media companies for a lack of action.
He said: “Of course these companies are making progress in terms of what they do but with the scale and pace of the problem their progress is in my view completely insufficient.
“Regardless of them getting better at cleaning material up, it’s not good enough, there’s still plenty of it out there and it stays out there too long.
“For a long time, myself and my successor have been making the point that even when they find criminal terrorist material they’re not reporting it to law enforcement which is a massive impediment to what we do.”
Sir Mark’s comments come after Prince William referred to social media in a speech in Christchurch following terror attacks on two mosques.
He said: “Extremism in all its forms must be defeated.
“The message from Christchurch and the message from Al Noor and Linwood mosques could not be more clear - the global ideology of hate will fail to divide us.
“And just as New Zealand has taken swift action to ban physical tools of violence, we must unite to reform the social technology that allowed hateful propaganda to inspire the murder of innocents.”
