Oral evidence: Countering extremism, HC 428Tuesday 2 February 2016

Oral evidence, 2 February 2016.

Witnesses

Dr Anthony House, Head of Public Policy Strategy, Google Europe, Middle East and Africa, Simon Milner, Policy Director for UK and Ireland, Middle East and Turkey, Facebook, and Nick Pickles, UK Public Policy Manager, Twitter, gave evidence. Q120 Q121 Q122 Q123 Q124 Q125 Q126 Q127 Q128 Q129 Q130 Q131 Q132 Q133 Q134 Q135 Q136 Q137 Q138 Q139 Q140 Q141 Q142 Q143 Q144 Q145 Q146 Q147 Q148 Q149 Q150 Q151 Q152 Q153 Q154 Q155 Q156 Q157 Q158 Q159 Q160 Q161 Q162 Q163 Q164 Q165 Q166 Q167 Q168 Q169 Q170 Q171 Q172 Q173 Q174 Q175 Q176 Q177 Q178 Q179 Q180 Q181 Q182 Q183 Q184 Q185 Q186 Q187 Q188 Q189 Q190 Q191 Q192 Q193 Q194 Q195 Q196 Q197 Q198 Q199 Q200 Q201 Q202 Q203 Q204 Q205 Q206 Q207 Q208 Q209 Q210 Q211 Q212 Q213 Q214 Q215 Q216 Q217 Q218 Q219 Q220 Q221 Q222 Q223 Q224 Q225 Q226 Q227 Q228 Q229 Q230 Q231 Q232 Q233 Q234 Q235 Q236 Q237 Q238 Q239 Q240 Q241 Q242 Q243 Q244 Q245 Q246 Q247 Q248 Q249 Q250 Q251 Q252 Q253 Q254 Q255 Q256 Q257 Q258 Q259 Q260 Q261 Q262 Q263 Q264 Q265 Q266 Q267 Q268 Q269 Q270 Q271 Q272 Q273 Q274 Q275 Q276 Q277 Q278 Q279 Q280 Q281 Q282 Q283 Q284 Q285 Q286 Q287 Q288 Q289 Q290 Q291 Q292 Q293 Q294 Q295 Q296 Q297 Q298 Q299 Q300 Q301 Q302 Q303 Q304 Q305 Q306 Q307 Q308 Q309 Q310 Q311 Q312 Q313 Q314 Q315 Q316 Q317 Q318 Q319 Q320 Q321 Q322 Q323 Q324 Q325 Q326 Q327 Q328 Q329 Q330 Q331 Q332 Q333 Q334 Q335 Q336 Q337 Q338 Q339 Q340 Q341 Q342 Q343 Q344 Q345 Q346 Q347 Q348 Q349 Q350 Q351 Q352 Q353 Q354 Q355 Q356 Q357 Q358 Q359 Q360 Q361 Q362 Q363 Q364 Q365 Q366 Q367 Q368 Q369 Q370 Q371 Q372 Q373 Q374 Q375 Q376 Q377 Q378 Q379 Q380 Q381 Q382 Q383 Q384 Q385 Q386 Q387 Q388 Q389 Q390 Q391 Q392 Q393 Q394 Q395 Q396 Q397 Q398 Q399 Q400 Q401 Q402 Q403 Q404 Q405 Q406 Q407 Q408 Q409 Q410 Q411 Q412 Q413 Q414 Q415 Q416 Q417 Q418 Q419 Q420 Q421 Q422 Q423 Q424 Q425 Q426 Q427 Q428 Q429 Q430 Q431 Q432 Q433 Q434 Q435 Q436 Q437 Q438 Q439 Q440 Q441 Q442 Q443 Q444 Q445 Q446 Q447 Q448 Q449 Q450 Q451 Q452 Q453 Q454 Q455 Q456 Q457 Q458 Q459 Q460 Q461 Q462 Q463 Q464 Q465 Q466 Q467 Q468 Q469 Q470 Q471 Q472 Q473 Q474 Q475 Q476 Q477 Q478 Q479 Q480 Q481 Q482 Q483 Q484 Q485 Q486 Q487 Q488 Q489 Q490 Q491 Q492 Q493 Q494 Q495 Q496 Q497 Q498 Q499 Q500 Q501 Q502 Q503 Q504 Q505 Q506 Q507 Q508 Q509 Q510 Q511 Q512 Q513 Q514 Q515 Q516 Q517 Q518 Q519 Q520 Q521 Q522 Q523 Q524 Q525 Q526 Q527 Q528 Q529 Q530 Q531 Q532 Q533 Q534 Q535 Q536 Q537 Q538 Q539 Q540 Q541 Q542 Q543 Q544 Q545 Q546 Q547 Q548 Q549 Q550 Q551 Q552 Q553 Q554 Q555 Q556 Q557 Q558 Q559 Q560 Q561 Q562 Q563 Q564 Q565 Q566 Q567 Q568 Q569 Q570 Q571 Q572 Q573 Q574 Q575 Q576 Q577 Q578 Q579 Q580 Q581 Q582 Q583 Q584 Q585 Q586 Q587 Q588 Q589 Q590 Q591 Q592 Q593 Q594 Q595 Q596 Q597 Q598 Q599 Q600 Q601 Q602 Q603 Q604 Q605 Q606 Q607 Q608 Q609 Q610 Q611 Q612 Q613 Q614 Q615 Q616 Q617 Q618 Q619 Q620 Q621 Q622 Q623 Q624 Q625 Q626 Q627 Q628 Q629 Q630 Q631 Q632 Q633 Q634 Q635 Q636 Q637 Q638 Q639 Q640 Q641 Q642 Q643 Q644 Q645 Q646 Q647 Q648 Q649 Q650 Q651 Q652 Q653 Q654 Q655 Q656 Q657 Q658 Q659 Q660 Q661 Q662 Q663 Q664 Q665 Q666 Q667 Q668 Q669 Q670 Q671 Q672 Q673 Q674 Q675 Q676 Q677 Q678 Q679 Q680 Q681 Q682 Q683 Q684 Q685 Q686 Q687 Q688 Q689 Q690 Q691 Q692 Q693 Q694 Q695 Q696 Q697 Q698 Q699 Q700 Q701 Q702 Q703 Q704 Q705 Q706 Q707 Q708 Q709 Q710 Q711 Q712 Q713 Q714 Q715 Q716 Q717 Q718 Q719 Q720 Q721 Q722 Q723 Q724 Q725 Q726 Q727 Q728 Q729 Q730 Q731 Q732 Q733 Q734 Q735 Q736 Q737 Q738 Q739 Q740 Q741 Q742 Q743 Q744 Q745 Q746 Q747 Q748 Q749 Q750 Q751 Q752 Q753 Q754 Q755 Q756 Q757 Q758 Q759 Q760 Q761 Q762 Q763 Q764 Q765 Q766 Q767 Q768 Q769 Q770 Q771 Q772 Q773 Q774 Q775 Q776 Q777 Q778 Q779 Q780 Q781 Q782 Q783 Q784 Q785 Q786 Q787 Q788 Q789 Q790 Q791 Q792 Q793 Q794 Q795 Q796 Q797 Q798 Q799 Q800 Q801 Q802 Q803 Q804 Q805 Q806 Q807 Q808 Q809 Q810 Q811 Q812 Q813 Q814 Q815 Q816 Q817 Q818 Q819 Q820 Q821 Q822 Q823 Q824 Q825 Q826 Q827 Q828 Q829 Q830 Q831 Q832 Q833 Q834 Q835 Q836 Q837 Q838 Q839 Q840 Q841 Q842 Q843 Q844 Q845 Q846 Q847 Q848 Q849 Q850 Q851 Q852 Q853 Q854 Q855 Q856 Q857 Q858 Q859 Q860 Q861 Q862 Q863 Q864 Q865 Q866 Q867 Q868 Q869 Q870 Q871 Q872 Q873 Q874 Q875 Q876 Q877 Q878 Q879 Q880 Q881 Q882 Q883 Q884 Q885 Q886 Q887 Q888 Q889 Q890 Q891 Q892 Q893 Q894 Q895 Q896 Q897 Q898 Q899 Q900 Q901 Q902 Q903 Q904 Q905 Q906 Q907 Q908 Q909 Q910 Q911 Q912 Q913 Q914 Q915 Q916 Q917 Q918 Q919 Q920 Q921 Q922 Q923 Q924 Q925 Q926 Q927 Q928 Q929 Q930 Q931 Q932 Q933 Q934 Q935 Q936 Q937 Q938 Q939 Q940 Q941 Q942 Q943 Q944 Q945 Q946 Q947 Q948 Q949 Q950 Q951 Q952 Q953 Q954 Q955 Q956 Q957 Q958 Q959 Q960 Q961 Q962 Q963 Q964 Q965 Q966 Q967 Q968 Q969 Q970 Q971 Q972 Q973 Q974 Q975 Q976 Q977 Q978 Q979 Q980 Q981 Q982

Chair

Could I call the Committee to order and ask everyone present to note the Register of Members interests where the interests of members of this Committee are noted? I welcome our witnesses today as part of our ongoing inquiry into counter-terrorism and the counter-narrative. Obviously the issue that has been in the public domain at the moment has been about your tax from your companies. This Committee is not concerned about this because you will be giving evidence to our sister Committees next week but just as an opening question, Dr House, do you have anything to add to the statements that have been made publicly by your company on this issue?

Dr House

No, Chair, thank you. I would simply say thank you for having me here to discuss the important counter-terrorism work that we are doing and repeating that two of my colleagues who are experts in tax will be appearing before the Public Accounts Committee next week.

Chair

You have just become the largest company in the world, I understand, last night with a turnover bigger than Norway, Austria and Colombia. Congratulations.

Dr House

Thank you.

Chair

As far as Facebook is concerned there was a report in The Times today that you have set aside $2 billion to settle your global tax bill but it does not include the United Kingdom.

Simon Milner

Thank you very much for inviting me to the Committee. I am aware of that news report, as you are, and such speculation in the media. Unlike other companies Facebook has not made a statement about this so I am unable to help you further other than to say—

Chair

Will you be giving evidence to Public Accounts Committee as well?

Simon Milner

We have not been invited to give evidence to the Public Accounts Committee, but I would just say that like all large companies we have a tax team who are in regular contact with tax authorities about our affairs in countries where we operate and those are complex matters and I have not come here prepared to answer questions on that.

Chair

Twitter, will you be giving evidence to the Public Accounts Committee?

Nick Pickles

We have not been invited to give evidence to that Committee, but, as Simon says, we agree with all local tax laws and I have not prepared that issue.

Chair

Good. We have dealt with that. Let us now move on to counter-terrorism. We had evidence in our inquiry from Mark Rowley, who is the head of counter-terrorism for the Metropolitan Police, and indeed David Anderson, who is the independent assessor for the Government on counter-terrorism. Both expressed concern that when they have approached your companies—and each one of you can answer these questions even though we direct it to one witness—all have been less than helpful in respect of handing over information on counter-terrorism. In particular Mark Rowling said, and he used these phrases, that some internet firms were deliberately undermining counter-terrorism investigations, refusing to hand over potential evidence or threatening to tip off suspects, preferring to protect customer privacy. Dr House, do you think that criticism is fair?

Dr House

It is certainly a fair issue to bring up. We have a long history of working together with Government and with law enforcement authorities to ensure they have the information they need to pursue investigations. Our co-operation is obviously governed under both UK and US law but we do our best to make sure that we can provide information in the case of investigations. In Google’s case we have long published statistics about our interactions with law enforcement authorities. For the UK there have obviously been an increasing number of requests for information from us. I think it has gone up from 1,200 in the first half of 2013 to about 3,000 in the first half of last year.

Chair

You have had 3,000 requests for information from the authorities?

Dr House

Yes.

Chair

What about Facebook?

Simon Milner

It is a similar number for each half year in the last few years, 3,000 to 4,000 in the UK. The UK is one of the highest, but just to be clear that is about all manner of things, not just counter-terrorism. But the expert team we have in the company that works in these spaces would confirm there has been an increase in the number of requests we have had on counter-terrorism.

Chair

Mr Pickles?

Nick Pickles

In the first half of 2015 we received 299 account information requests. I think one of the things that reflects is that Twitter is a public platform so you can look at a Twitter account without even having a Twitter account yourself. There is a huge amount of information available without having to ask us directly.

Chair

Mr Pickles, you understand our concern when the head of counter-terrorism says that you are undermining efforts? He did not name the companies but he talked generally of internet companies and he went on to talk about people being tipped off. In fact, David Anderson in his report, published in June 2015, said this, “Some service providers will tip off a customer that they are under surveillance unless persuaded not to do so, typically by a court order”. Have you all tipped off customers that they are under surveillance?

Nick Pickles

Let me be absolutely clear. I think this is an issue where some of the media reporting has not helped form a good understanding of policy.

Chair

Sure, that is why you are here.

Nick Pickles

Absolutely.

Chair

You are here so that you do not have to rely on Twitter or the media. You can tell us, have you tipped off customers that they are under surveillance?

Nick Pickles

The first question is, are they under surveillance? We are not part of that discussion. Where a specific request for user data is made to our company under many jurisdictions around the world there are legal frameworks that exist to provide notice to that user. One of the things we are very clear about—reading the transcript of when David Anderson spoke to this Committee he said he was not aware of any circumstances where the situation Mr Rowley outlined had occurred, but we are very, very clear—

Chair

We have spoken to him since his appearance and reminded him of what he said in June 2015, and that he did say that in his report. You are saying you do tip people off, but that you have to do so because if the UK authorities ask you for certain information there are other jurisdictions in the world where you have to tell the customer. Is that what you are saying?

Nick Pickles

Let me be clear. In the US and other jurisdictions there is a legal framework that provides for certainty. Our policy is very clear. We seek to provide user notice, and I will quote directly from our policy, “Exceptions to prior notice may include exigent or counterproductive circumstances”. So, we work with law enforcement on a case-by-case basis to make sure we do not disrupt those investigations you are discussing.

Chair

But you have not been clear. You have been slightly more complicated. We just want the simple answer. If a UK authority like the head of counter-terrorism says, “We would like this information” are you duty bound by either your policy or the law of another country to tell that user that this information has been requested? It is a yes or a no.

Nick Pickles

No. By our policy we allow ourselves to not notify a user where it is counterproductive so we do not—

Chair

That is a double negative.

Nick Pickles

We would like to tell users but we do not have to.

Chair

So, you have not told users that this information has been requested? You never tell users?

Nick Pickles

No, we do tell users and it is content-specific.

Chair

You have contradicted yourself, Mr Pickles?

Nick Pickles

No, it is content-specific. If, let us say, for example, the police request information pertaining to a journalist or a Member of Parliament we would seek to give notice because in that case it is reasonable to do so.

Chair

So, if the police ask you—

Nick Pickles

In a counter-terrorism situation it would not be.

Chair

Just slightly slower. We have plenty of time so do not worry. If it is an MP or a journalist that the authorities requested information about you would tell those people?

Nick Pickles

Again, it is dependent on the investigation. If it was counter-terrorism—

Chair

But you just said that you would tell them?

Nick Pickles

Again I said it was content-specific. There are certain roles where it may be more reasonable to give user notice than others.

Chair

We understand the word reasonable because we are lawmakers and therefore we have to deal with these words all the time. I am just asking you for facts, Mr Pickles. Do you tell people other than journalists and MPs that the authorities have asked for information?

Nick Pickles

Yes.

Chair

Thank you. Mr Milner, are you in the same position that you, in effect, tip off people and tell them when information is requested?

Simon Milner

No. We do not do it in the UK.

Chair

Do you do it in America?

Simon Milner

Yes, sometimes, but not in every case. It does depend somewhat on rules in the particular jurisdiction and indeed it is a matter before the Investigatory Powers Joint Committee, which is looking at exactly this issue.

Chair

I am sure we will come on to that.

Simon Milner

In the UK we do not do it and even if we could we would never do it in respect of counter-terrorism cases.

Chair

Yes, so if Mr Rowley or someone else like him says, “We want this information; it is a terrorism investigation” you would never inform the user?

Simon Milner

That is correct.

Chair

You would just hand over the information if it came within the criteria?

Simon Milner

If it met our criteria. We review every case on a case-by-case basis but we would not be tipping someone off.

Chair

Thank you. So, it is a yes from Nick Pickles, yes from Twitter. It is a definite no from Facebook in the UK but in America it is different. We accept that and we understand that. What is the situation with Google, Dr House?

Dr House

We are in the same situation as Facebook where it is jurisdiction dependent. Obviously we follow the law in the jurisdictions where we operate, but where it is not prevented we are disclosing as appropriate in the context of the investigation.

Chair

In respect of taking down items that are on the internet, we have also received a lot of evidence over the last few months and, indeed in our previous report, that person-to-person radicalisation has been replaced by radicalisation and grooming on the net and therefore internet companies are obviously important in that context. We have also had evidence that in 289 days groups like Anonymous and Ghost Security have taken down or reported 2,555 websites, reported 19,568 Twitter pages and reported 40,000 suspected terrorist materials in total on the internet. Do you have figures, Dr House, as to the number of websites that you all have taken down, that you all deem to be websites that propagate terrorism?

Dr House

We do not break down our removals by the specific criterion on which we remove them. It is probably worth stepping back and putting it into context. We obviously operate YouTube, which is a visual platform for sharing information, and we also operate a search engine. In the case of YouTube where we are hosting materials and we set community guidelines that set the rules of the road for what is acceptable we have had a zero tolerance approach to terrorism for years. We first put up a flagging option for terrorist content in 2008 and we have adapted our policy over time to take into account new ways that people are abusing the platform to make sure that that zero tolerance policy is put into effect well.

Chair

How many have you taken down in total?

Dr House

On the YouTube side we receive about 100,000 flags a day. but that is across all types of abuse.

Chair

A day?

Dr House

A day.

Chair

In the UK?

Dr House

No, globally. 2014 is the last year for which we have numbers. We have removed 14 million videos from YouTube in 2014. Again that is across all types of abuse.

Chair

Are you able to be more specific in the future? Would you be able to look at the number of websites and the number of items that have terrorism content? Are you able to do that?

Dr House

We are not able to do it right now, but we are certainly open to and we are actively thinking about ways that we can be more transparent about what we remove and what rules it violates. It is worth noting, though, that one of the reasons it is difficult is because if somebody is offended by something on YouTube they go into our flagging procedure and a lot of those flags overlap. So, they could flag for terrorist content but at the same time they might flag for hate speech or incitement to violence and those are all slightly different. At present we are not able to count that way, but it is something we are keen to think about as regards how we can do a better job.

Chair

Mr Milner, your boss, Cheryl Sandberg, was pretty critical a few days ago about the content on the net. She said she felt it had become a place where hate was being disseminated. Is that right?

Simon Milner

Absolutely.

Chair

What prompted Cheryl Sandberg to say that and how many pages or profiles has Facebook taken down, for example, in the last year relating specifically to counter-terrorism?

Simon Milner

Can I take the first part of your question, on what prompted Cheryl Sandberg to say that, and then I will take the second part around data? What prompted it was the announcement of an initiative called the Online Civil Courage Initiative that was announced a couple of weeks ago in Berlin, a joint initiative with two UK-based organisations, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and the institute for the study of research into countering violent extremism—the ICSR—based at King’s College. This is an initiative that will combine support for NGOs that are trying to use the internet for counter-speech and a counter-narrative, some research into what works and then training around best practice. So, what Cheryl said was part of that.

Chair

What prompted this? Why did Cheryl Sandberg suddenly say this after all these years?

Simon Milner

It absolutely was not sudden, Chairman. This was something that as a company we have taken very seriously for a number of years, but, of course, as events in the world have unfolded in recent years—and this has become probably the number one public policy issue that I talk about with Governments across the many countries that I cover as well as in the UK—this has just risen up the policy agenda and I am sure you would agree that it has been the same for yourselves. So, it has risen up our agenda as well and we want to ensure we are learning from organisations that work on the ground, from the best academic researchers, and that we are providing the best support. So, it is absolutely a demonstration of—

Chair

Are you going to publish the outcomes of the initiative?

Simon Milner

Absolutely. This is a three year long initiative and there will be more to follow. Do you want me to cover the second part of your question?

Chair

Very quickly.

Simon Milner

We do not provide the same level of detail as yet as Google do around takedown, so we provide similar information around the requests we get from Governments but at the moment we do not provide public data on the number of pieces of content or accounts that we take down.

Chair

Finally from you, Mr Pickles, on this, the Turkish Government has just fined Twitter $50,000 for refusing to remove what it considers terrorist propaganda. I have just been looking at the pages of Mumsnet for Jihadists and the tweets they have sent out today. One of them says, “I asked about the paths to paradise. It was said that there is no path shorter than jihad”. This is pretty hot stuff in support of Anjem Choudary. What are you doing about those who are using Twitter in order to propagate terrorism in this way, because it is quite obvious? You do not need a BA in counter-terrorism to understand that they are recruiting using Twitter.

Nick Pickles

First, in terms of statistics we have take down tens of thousands of accounts. We, like Google, are thinking about how we can be more transparent.

Chair

Is that last year or is that in the life of Twitter?

Nick Pickles

Those figures would be in the cumulative period of the last 12 months.

Chair

Are they broken down between counter-terrorism and other areas or are they global as they are in the case of other companies?

Nick Pickles

That specific figure of tens of thousands of accounts is specifically relating to violent extremist accounts.

Chair

Tens of thousands?

Nick Pickles

Tens of thousands, yes.

Chair

You have taken down tens of thousands of Twitter pages.

Nick Pickles

Yes, and we are currently looking and considering how we can be more transparent because we appreciate there is interest in this area, so we are having internal discussions about whether there is more we can do to provide extra data, and if we are able to do so I am happy to write to the Committee subsequently with that data.

Chair

Would you be able to publish this information on a much more regular basis, because it does not need a Select Committee of the House to get this information, does it?

Nick Pickles

No, and like other companies we publish six-monthly transparency reports so one of the questions we are asking internally is can we add this kind of data to our takedown reports, which we already publish?

Chair

But you all accept, each of you, yes or no, that now this is the No. 1 way that people are being groomed on the internet for extremism? Dr House?

Dr House

The question is, is the internet the No. 1 way that people are being groomed? I am afraid I do not know enough about how people are groomed offline to answer, but it is obviously something that we take very seriously.

Simon Milner

I am not sure I do agree but also I think you would be better off talking to people like the Quilliam Foundation, like the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, and like the properly named International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation—I apologise to them for getting their name wrong earlier. They are the experts on how people are groomed. We are not. We are the experts on how we can keep this kind of content off Facebook, but what happens outside of Facebook we cannot see.

Nick Pickles

I would agree. Professor Peter Neumann has written a lot about this and I would recommend his writings to the Committee.

Chair

Mr Jayawardena has a quick supplementary then Nusrat Ghani.

Mr Jayawardena

Dr House, I just wanted to follow up on one point. You said that you had removed 14 million videos, which is an extraordinary figure, and that shows that Google’s current policy, if I understand it correctly, which is a team of reviewers working round the clock to look at the videos manually, is certainly working to an extent. But are you confident that it is succeeding in removing the dangerous material quickly enough in terms of preventing people from being radicalised in a short window, although a short window could be time enough?

Dr House

It is certainly something that we think about and we review how we do removals on a regular basis. It is worth noting that 400 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute and the vast majority of that is people using the product in the way it is intended, not to abuse anyone, not to radicalise. Since YouTube was founded, and as it has grown, we have had to think about what is the best way to do this and continuing to this day—we have a billion people on the platform every month—we have found that the best way to get this stuff down quickly and to get it down reliably remains to have people flagging it and then removing it quickly, which happens quickly. It happens within a number of hours.

Nusrat Ghani

Mr Milner, you said that the initiatives that are taking place at the moment to deal with terrorism have, as you call it, recently come into the public domain to become a policy issue. Most of us would argue it has been an issue for a long time and that your organisations are now just coming forward to accept some responsibility that people are being radicalised on your platform, so you have an issue with managing your brand—your company brands—because they seem to be hijacked by terrorist organisations who are grooming vulnerable people on your platforms. What would you say to that, Dr House?

Dr House

This is not something that we have only just started thinking about. As I mentioned, we have had a zero tolerance policy on YouTube towards terrorist content since 2008 when we implemented the flag. We hosted our first summit on violent extremism in 2011. We have been working with the CTIRU at the Home Office since 2012. We hosted a counter-speech event with the Home Office and then with you fairly soon after that so this is a multi-year—

Chair

With the Committee, not the Home Office.

Dr House

Sorry, yes, with the Committee in 2013, I believe. This is something we have been thinking about for many years and obviously there is more work to be done.

Nusrat Ghani

If you have zero tolerance on YouTube how can videos appear to enable people to groom younger vulnerable people or to export terrorism? How is your zero tolerance working?

Dr House

As I said, we have 400 hours of video loaded every minute and we therefore rely on the community to flag videos that violate our zero tolerance policy. For people who violate that policy after multiple violations or one serious violation we will terminate the account and we prevent the person who created that account from creating a new account.

Nusrat Ghani

Who decides what is a serious violation?

Dr House

Our community guidelines are fairly clear on the different types of infractions that happen. There are different ways that people will abuse a service like YouTube but to be clear we strictly prohibit calls for or the glorification of violence. We specifically ban videos at training camps or direct recruitment. We specifically ban incitement of hatred against people based on their gender or race or nationality and those are all serious violations of our policies.

Simon Milner

I can understand why something like the announcement that was made a couple of weeks ago, that I talked about earlier, can look as if the company has just discovered this. That is not the case. It is all about—

Nusrat Ghani

No, I said that the company was worried about its brand reputation. Or was it accepting some responsibility?

Simon Milner

We absolutely accept that we have a responsibility to act in partnership with civil society, with Governments, with expert academics.

Nusrat Ghani

No, accepting responsibility that its platforms are being used to generate extremism.

Simon Milner

We accept the responsibility that we have to be acting on this, absolutely. We are not responsible for the behaviour of people who abuse our platform but we are responsible for ensuring we have the right policies in place and very well-trained people who can act on reports quickly and take action as required. But most important we have a responsibility to help those organisations like Imams Online, like the Active Change Foundation, like Connect Justice, who want use our platform for good. So, as well as the OCCI initiative there are a number of other partnerships we have in this country and elsewhere where we are helping organisations who want to present an alternative view—typically of Islam, or it could be another religion or another belief—who want to use our platform for good. So, that is something we have taken seriously for a long time. In fact I appeared before this Committee three years ago to talk about this very issue. We have learnt a lot since then and we are continuing to improve what we do and invest more money into it.

Nick Pickles

First, to echo policy points, our policies clearly prohibit encouraging terrorism, promoting terrorism. One of the questions we have to ask as companies is about the fact that sometimes what is on our platform is a reflection of society and sometimes that is very uncomfortable because what you see is a very transparent view on what people are thinking. I think where our responsibility is—I know this is an area the Committee might want to look into—and the role of companies is making sure people can use our platforms to challenge ideas. We can remove all the content but even if we remove the content the idea remains, and a lot of this is about ideology and about ideas and if we do not challenge the ideas then the issues will remain and will not be solved.

Nusrat Ghani

But you are not then generating conversation to challenge those ideas. I find it difficult to understand that Google, Twitter and Facebook take no responsibility whatsoever for people using their platforms to radicalise other people. If you had a shop and somebody walked in and started shouting abuse at another customer or trying to recruit someone to be involved in a terrorist act I hope that you as an individual would try to remove them from the shop, not expect someone else to come in to do that. But you are on your platforms. You are expecting other people to monitor or remove. Do you not take any responsibility?

Simon Milner

Ms Ghani, if we use that example that is exactly what we do. We remove them from the shop and we prevent them having a voice in our community. Also, if I just talk to you a little bit about what we have seen, working with experts can be the most effective voice—because one of the questions always put to us is, why do you not have a voice? Why does Facebook not step in and say, “Hey, that is not right?” The work we have done with Demos looking at what kind of counter-speech works shows us that it is not about the platform—it is also not Government or elected politicians whose voice matters in these debates—but people who are more like those young people who might be radicalised and people who use humour. It is people who use very eye-catching content who can be more effective at drowning out those negative voices in our community.

Chair

Before I bring in Mr Umunna and Victoria Atkins, can you just tell us how many people are in your hit squads, the places where this content is monitored and then reported or taken down, Mr Pickles?

Nick Pickles

More than 100. It covers a lot of different teams so a specific number is difficult but more than 100.

Chair

For—how many accounts worldwide do you have, remind us?

Nick Pickles

There are 320 million people using Twitter and we have a variety of tools. On Simon’s point, one of the issues we have is stopping people coming back on the platform so that resembles other technical challenges so we can use—

Chair

One hundred to monitor 320 million?

Nick Pickles

There are more than 100. It varies depending on issues, with language specialists.

Chair

Mr Milner, Facebook, what is in the hit squad?

Simon Milner

We have a community operations team. We do not have a public number for that but it does number in the thousands of employees who are part of our community operations team, the vast majority of whom, though, do not focus on counter-terrorism. We have an expert team that focuses specifically on the issue of terrorism and then there is a wider team that focus on—

Chair

How many are in that, Mr Milner?

Simon Milner

I am afraid I cannot give you a number.

Chair

Would you write to us and tell us?

Simon Milner

I am afraid not. It is not a public number that we provide but I would be very happy for you to come and meet some of them. You are very welcome to come to our Dublin office where some of them work, come and meet that team and understand a bit more about that expertise and how they work.

Chair

Thanks for the invitation. We will let you know. Dr House?

Dr House

Much like Facebook I am not in a position to share a number. We do not have a public number for the size of our removals team but it is a significant number.

Chair

Do you have such a squad?

Dr House

We do and it is around the world.

Chair

Is it also based in Dublin?

Dr House

We have some people based in Dublin but we have people staffing it 24 hours a day, seven days a week so it is a global team.

Chair

You did not tell me the number of accounts you had worldwide.

Simon Milner

The latest number we have is 1.59 billion accounts but remember we are not monitoring them although we are handling reports. We are handling millions of reports every day. Most of them are not about the issue that this Committee is looking into.

Victoria Atkins

Questions first of all to all three of you. You presumably all believe in corporate social responsibility, yes?

Dr House

Yes.

Victoria Atkins

Indeed, Google, your slogan until October last year was “Don’t be evil”. Is that right, Dr House?

Dr House

It still is.

Victoria Atkins

Right, and you must accept sitting here as you do representing three of the largest companies on the internet that sadly the internet plays a vital role in extremism and terrorism from the perspective of extremists and terrorists?

Dr House

Certainly a serious problem I would say, yes.

Simon Milner

I am not sure I would use the word “vital”. That implies that it would not exist if the internet did not exist. It is impossible for us to know because the internet is so pervasive but the problem with terrorism is clearly not something that started with the internet.

Victoria Atkins

No, all right. Let’s try to get a little closer together, then. You would accept that when we look at terrorism historically, now that the internet is here it is easier for extremists and terrorists to speak to each other than it was 20 or 30 years ago?

Simon Milner

Of course. It is easier for everyone to communicate. That is the whole purpose of our services.

Victoria Atkins

Just to keep an eye on it, given the questions I am about to ask you, of course this is also the case for paedophilia sadly. The internet plays a role in that?

Simon Milner

Our companies have been at the absolute forefront of helping to combat the spread of such material and to bring people to justice.

Victoria Atkins

Also serious organised crime because criminals use the internet just as everybody else does?

Simon Milner

Yes.

Victoria Atkins

So, why did none of your companies choose to attend the Joint Committee that is scrutinising the Draft Investigatory Powers Bill in the House of Lords at the moment?

Nick Pickles

I think first, one can say there was a joint statement made that was a comprehensive statement of issues with the Bill. Secondly, I understand the Committee wanted us to attend together and the Committee was working on a very accelerated timescale. So, there was not a refusal. My understanding was the fact that trying to get people from companies across the world in the same room at the same time at just a few weeks’ notice was difficult. I think our submission will evidence the fact of how seriously and how comprehensively we have looked at this Bill, and indeed the seriousness with which we take this Bill. The fact that five global tech companies—the three of us and Microsoft and Yahoo—came together to make a unified statement about our concerns with the Bill demonstrates just how seriously we are taking it.

Victoria Atkins

May I deal with the timing factor? I should declare I am on the Committee. This meeting today was organised at very short notice, was it not—last week or perhaps two weeks ago?

Nick Pickles

Yes.

Victoria Atkins

We have managed to get all three of you in the room. The Joint Committee made significant efforts to fit in with your companies’ timetables so that we could hear your evidence and yet you still declined. Why were you afraid to come before the Joint Committee to be asked about your views on what is one of the most important pieces of legislation this Parliament will deal with?

Nick Pickles

First, I think there has been a discussion with the Committee for some time over diary dates[1]. I know I made several comments about when I was free over a prolonged period of time. Secondly, our joint submission is very clear. We are not afraid of engaging on this issue. I gave evidence to the previous Joint Committee on the Communications Data Bill in a previous role and the substance of the submission you saw from industry on this Bill more than surpasses the kind of discussion that happened last time. So, I do not accept the premise of the question. I think we have taken it very seriously.

Simon Milner

I have nothing to add to the logistics points that Mr Pickles has made but I would say that I reject any suggestion that this implies that our companies do not care about the issue, do not care about the Investigatory Powers Bill and the important powers it will convey on the authorities, or do not care about the issues that we have particularly addressed in our submission, nor does it means that we do not take our responsibilities seriously in respect of the issues before this Committee.

Dr House

The logistical challenges are a bit outside my direct area of expertise. I cover all of Europe, the Middle East and Africa. But I would simply repeat that we are committed to working with the British Government in making sure the Investigatory Powers Bill—

Victoria Atkins

I should add we heard evidence from a judge in New Zealand at 5.00 pm our time, 5.00 am his time, so we did do Skype if that was available to any of your employees internationally, but we will leave it there. Mr Pickles, I want to deal with your phrase about when Twitter chooses to tip off people that law enforcement have made inquiries about with you. I think I picked up the phrase that you said that you would tell users when it may be reasonable to tell them that they are the subject of law enforcement. Have I heard you correctly?

Nick Pickles

It is content-specific, yes.

Victoria Atkins

What is the interpretation of reasonableness according to Twitter?

Nick Pickles

It would be the same kind of reasonableness that a US court would use or indeed any court. It is a useful opportunity for me to clarify and I apologise to the Committee if I was not clear. In the case of an ongoing counter-terrorism investigation that would be a circumstance where we would not seek to provide user notification that a request for the data had been made.

Chair

Let us be clear. You said you did tip them off. You are now saying you did not.

Nick Pickles

I am not aware of specific cases but in the case of a hypothetical case of a counter-terrorist request for user data, that is a case that would fall within the exception, which is clearly in our policy, as a counterproductive circumstance.

Victoria Atkins

Does paedophilia fall within that definition?

Nick Pickles

I think that is another example of where we would not seek to provide user notice because of an ongoing investigation.

Victoria Atkins

Does serious organised crime fit within that definition?

Nick Pickles

Again, I imagine that is a circumstance where we would not provide user notice.

Victoria Atkins

Who makes the decision on reasonableness for Twitter?

Nick Pickles

We have a legal team working on these issues. As I say, it is worth pointing out in terms of the number of requests in a year, we see hundreds. For a platform of 320 million people globally, more than 15 million in the UK, in the first half of 2015 we had 299 requests. To put this into context, there is a huge amount of information available publicly on Twitter that does not need to come to us. We also work with the police. Tomorrow morning I am joining a conference call to help the police understand our policies in this area.

Chair

Yes, you have said that.

Victoria Atkins

I just want to get to the bottom of this because, as you will understand, one of the balancing acts that the Joint Committee is having to grapple with is the balance of civil liberties against national security and keeping our country safe from both terrorism and serious organised crime. I just want to get a sense of who decides in your legal team that a request made by law enforcement is unreasonable. What right of appeal do police officers have against that?

Nick Pickles

This is why, as I say, tomorrow morning we are having a conversation with UK law enforcement to discuss these issues, to help them understand our policies. It is also one of the reasons why in our submission—in the US, to give you an example, and in other jurisdictions there is a time period for police once they have requested data to investigate, and at the end of that time period, the police can either allow user notification to happen or go before a judge and ask for an extension—one of the questions that we have asked of the Investigatory Powers Bill is whether such a framework would make the situation clearer for everybody if a judge makes a decision whether someone should be notified or not.

Chair

Mr Milner, anything to add? You do not have to add, just nod if you do not have—

Simon Milner

Nothing to add.

Chair

Dr House, no?

Dr House

I do not have anything to add unless there is something else that you want to know from me specifically.

Victoria Atkins

Mr Pickles, I find it very interesting that a tech company should be telling Parliament how best to police law enforcement and security service inquiries. I suspect that may be one of the reasons why your company decided it was best not to come before the Committee.

Nick Pickles

I apologise if that was the impression I gave. I did not mean to give that impression.

Chair

Thanks very much. The final question.

Victoria Atkins

The Investigatory Powers Bill focuses on the double lock; that is, the mechanism by which the Secretary of State, be it the Home Secretary, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland or whoever, judges a warrant to be necessary and proportionate and by which it is then approved by a judicial commissioner. My final question to you, Mr Pickles, is why Twitter thinks that your legal team supersedes the Home Secretary and the judicial commissioner in its definition of reasonableness.

Nick Pickles

I think if you look at the submission our companies have made on this particular point, one of the questions we have is what happens when a request that has gone through that process may be either technically not possible or may be a request for information that would not be in compliance with US law. There is a conflict of law question in this area of policy, which is why all our companies have encouraged the British Government and the United States Government to work closely on building a legal framework because we do not want to have to make those decisions. We would like a court to make those decisions and the legal framework—

Victoria Atkins

Mr Pickles, you are not answering my question. I asked you what gives your legal team in Twitter the right to override the Secretary of State and the judicial commissioner.

Nick Pickles

As I say, we are not overriding anybody. What we are doing is respecting that there are different legal frameworks at play and we would like—

Victoria Atkins

I am not interested in the legal frameworks elsewhere. I am talking about a warrant being issued in the United Kingdom to stop a terrorist attack. What gives Twitter the right to override the Home Secretary and the judicial commissioner?

Nick Pickles

In the case of an emergency threat to life, we would provide information and have consistently done so, as none of the witnesses have raised otherwise, but this is one of the very reasons why an international legal framework is so important.

Chair

Yes, I think you have made that clear. Thank you. We have to move on. Before I bring in Mr Winnick, Mr Umunna had a supplementary on the original set of questions, I think.

Mr Umunna

Yes, I first of all wanted to follow up on a question that you asked, Chair.

Chair

Yes, please.

Mr Umunna

Mr Pickles provided an answer but Mr Milner and Dr House did not, and it was in relation to the number of people working in the teams removing content. Now, Mr Pickles has provided us with a rough figure against a user group of 320 million, I think you said. What I do not understand is why Dr House and Mr Milner will not provide those details to the Committee. Both of you did not just say that you cannot; you have said that your companies will not provide those figures publicly. Why?

Simon Milner

I am happy to take that away, Mr Umunna, and write to the Committee in regard to it. I will check again with my colleagues, but my understanding is we have been asked this question before. I was asked it three years ago. It is not information that we make public, but I will ask again.

Dr House

We are in a similar situation.

Mr Umunna

You will write to us on that?

Dr House

We will write to you.

Mr Umunna

Okay. My two points: one was for Twitter and the other was for all of you. I want to check one thing that has been reported and was reported in April of last year, Mr Pickles. This was in the Daily Mail, which is why I want to check whether or not it is factually correct. Is it true that more than 10,000 accounts linked to Daesh militants and their supporters were suspended in a 24-hour period in a fresh crackdown on those tweeting violent threats? Is that correct?

Nick Pickles

To date we have definitely suspended more than tens of thousands of accounts. As to that specific time period I am not sure, but cumulatively we have certainly suspended more than that figure of accounts.

Mr Umunna

Would you be able to write to the Committee and let us know whether that is an accurate report or not and, if it is, explain why, if it is the case that this was done in a 24-hour period, 10,000 or more were done in that 24-hour period and were not suspended beforehand? Do you think you could write and explain to us why?

Nick Pickles

Absolutely, yes.

Mr Umunna

The questions that the Chair and others have posed to you have been based around when you receive a request for information from a law enforcement agency. I want to ask you a question about the threshold that applies in each of your companies before you proactively notify law enforcement of there being terrorist material that has been identified by your company or by users. What is the threshold beyond which you decide in each of your companies that you must proactively notify the law enforcement agencies?

Dr House

A threat to life.

Simon Milner

Exactly the same for us.

Nick Pickles

We do not proactively notify and one of the things is that because Twitter is public that content is available, so often it has been seen already. Then law enforcement have established criteria to come to us and request information.

Mr Umunna

Just so I have that right, Twitter has no proactive approach to notifying law enforcement of potential terrorist material on Twitter?

Nick Pickles

No, and actually one of the things that it is very important to flag here is this was discussed in Congress recently. There were discussions about putting this into a legal requirement and the FBI director was asked whether he would support such a proposal. He did not support that proposal. One of the reasons is that, as I say, if we are taking down tens of thousands of accounts, that is a huge amount of information and we are not in a position to judge credibility of those threats. You may end up in a situation where you swamp law enforcement with unwanted information, so I think that is why the FBI director said what he said.

Mr Umunna

Notwithstanding whatever the FBI felt was appropriate for the United States, with regard to the United Kingdom, do you think it is right that you are the ones who should determine the threshold that should apply in those circumstances? Or do you believe that the better approach would be for there to be a legal framework that others, perhaps judicially, can apply to determine when you should proactively provide information on potential terrorist activity on your platforms?

Nick Pickles

A legal framework is always preferable. The one problem we have in this area is different covenant countries around the world—we all operate internationally—have a different definition sometimes of what is a terrorist. A legal framework is preferable, but it is important to bear in mind the international precedent you would set in that space.

Chair

Yes, thank you. You have said that before. Thank you.

Mr Winnick

There are two separate issues. I will come to the question of the powers the Home Secretary wants, which was raised by my colleague Ms Atkins. First, do you accept there is dissatisfaction generally, certainly not only in Parliament but among the public, over the way in which those who wish to engage in terror use social media and continue to do so? It is a yes or no response. Do you accept there is this feeling of dissatisfaction?

Dr House

Speaking for Google, absolutely. We would prefer if no one abused our platform to abuse individuals or to promote terrorism.

Mr Winnick

One assumes you do—

Simon Milner

I think in general the fact that there is enormous public disquiet about extremism and terrorism and radicalisation, then, of course, people are right to be concerned about it wherever it appears, including online.

Mr Winnick

You see, if you take, for example, one of the two murderers of the soldier, Lee Rigby, he put his aims on Facebook saying what he intended to do. I understand that Facebook had not been aware of what occurred. However, the Intelligence and Security Committee here then discovered that Facebook had previously shut down this person’s account, obviously very rightly so, but failed to relay such concerns to the security service. Would that be right, Mr Milner?

Simon Milner

Mr Winnick, the Committee of which you speak in their report did not name any company. I am unable to talk about individual cases, as I hope you would understand, but I can reassure you that when our company comes across information that there is an immediate threat to life, we provide that to the authorities. Any requests associated with terrorists or would-be terrorists we take extremely seriously and we have an expert team that deal with those cases.

Mr Winnick

And as for the person who was sentenced yesterday—the female who had gone with her young child to Syria then returned—during the course of the proceedings in court and also in the judge’s summing up when the person had been found guilty by the jury, it appeared that she had used social media to advertise her intentions. The whole point—the reason that you are here to a large extent—is that with which I started at the beginning of my questioning, the concern that what could not possibly happen in any way with ordinary print material happens on social media because of the very nature of the companies in which you are senior executives.

Simon Milner

I would draw a very strong distinction between, say, the pages of the Daily Mail online or The Times online and Facebook. Facebook is a community of almost 1.6 billion people. There are billions of things being posted every single day, most of that extremely benign, indeed uplifting, from right across the world. However, just like the UK, which has a population of 60-odd million, there are some bad people and there are some people who want to use our service with ill intent, including the most serious crime of terrorism.

Mr Winnick

To say the least.

Simon Milner

To say the least, absolutely, and we absolutely want to root them out and do everything we can to stop them doing that, Mr Winnick. Believe me, we are committing more resources to this month by month and learning as we go and working very closely with the authorities. We would much prefer that was not the case. Much as we would prefer that there were not people trying to radicalise young people in communities right across the UK, we would love to be able to press a button to get rid of them, but you cannot. It is not as easy as that. It takes a lot of effort, a lot of resource, a lot of intelligence. Believe me, we are applying our best endeavours to this and we will continue to do so. We expect to be held to account as per this Committee for what we are doing and we are very serious about it.

Chair

Mr Pickles, do you want to answer Mr Winnick’s question?

Nick Pickles

I think one of the points, just to follow on, is yes, social media brings out things that are discomforting and it highlights issues in society. There was some research from Northern Ireland, which was funded by the Northern Ireland Community Relations Council, that said while the challenge is there, there is also an opportunity, and the opportunity for using social media to engage across cultural boundaries, across social boundaries, where they did not exist previously is how people will meet people from different faiths. Megan Phelps-Roper, who was the person who formerly ran the social media for the Westboro Baptist Church, talked very movingly—she is coming into our office in a few weeks—about how engaging with someone over social media was how she rehumanised in her mind this other person that she had been told she should hate. That process led to her leaving the Westboro Baptist Church. I think this is also an opportunity to challenge ideas.

Mr Winnick

While there is unanimous opinion in Parliament, to say the least, that every effort should be made to avoid social media being used by those who want to carry out terrorism atrocities like we saw in Paris and, indeed, in London in 7/7, there is not the same unanimous view about what the Home Secretary is intending to seek. Therefore, when Ms Atkins put a view to you, it should be said that Parliament has not reached a decision on this at the moment. Do you recognise there is, however, a much divided opinion among the public and certainly in Parliament over what the Home Secretary is intending to ask Parliament to approve?

Dr House

Absolutely we acknowledge that and that it is not a settled decision in the UK. One of the important contextual things to note is that the UK Government is taking a leading role in modernising surveillance laws for the 21st century. Like most other countries, the surveillance laws here have not been updated since most people had access to the internet as they were walking around, so it is right that the modernisation of these laws be looked at.

Simon Milner

Dr House puts it very well; I could not put it better. I would say that I have responsibility for Facebook in a number of countries, including the Middle East, Israel, Turkey. I really hope that the UK gets this right because I think if it does it could set an important benchmark for many other countries that I operate in. I am always asked about what is happening in the UK and people are looking to this Parliament. It is not just about the safety of 60 million people in the UK. It could have ramifications right across the world, frankly.

Chair

Sure. Mr Pickles?

Nick Pickles

I think that is absolutely right. The international precedent this Bill will set is worth bearing in mind when considering it. We have been grateful as an industry for dialogue with the Home Office about the substance of it, and we do look forward to hearing the Committee’s work to take forward this important Bill.

Mr Winnick

There are cynical people in this world. The Chair in the beginning said we are not involved in matters concerning tax, or at least we are not concerned when we are sitting around here. Some of us are very, very concerned about your tax position when we are in the Chamber itself, but we are not involved with it this afternoon in the Home Affairs Committee.

Chair

Indeed.

Mr Winnick

However, as I have said, there are cynical people and I have seen a report in the newspaper that says, in effect, that because of the controversy over tax affairs and the fact you are very much on the defensive—and some would say so are Ministers—it is going to be said that you will come to some sweetheart deal over what the Home Secretary is intending, which many of us would describe as a snooper’s Bill, in order to minimise the embarrassment your three companies are facing over tax. Indeed, the Chair of this Committee, if I may be so bold as to quote you, said that you would be very wise to work very closely with the Government on the powers she wants. He was speaking, as he has every right to speak, as a Member of Parliament, not on behalf of this Committee. We have not reached a decision. What do you say to that cynical view that because of the embarrassment that you are suffering as companies over tax matters you will make some sort of deal with the Government, despite what you said just a moment ago?

Chair

Very quickly, we do not want to concentrate on tax, but do you regard the Home Secretary as your sweetheart, Dr House?

Dr House

Certainly not. I would simply say each of these policy matters is serious and worth serious consideration and at least in my mind and in the mind of the team I work with at Google there is no bleed-over. We need to have all of these conversations.

Simon Milner

I think one is a matter of policy, and that is legislation that is not yet set, and one is a matter about the application of legislation. Completely different teams deal with it in our company and there is no discussion between them about the matters you described.

Nick Pickles

I think if you read our submission to the Joint Committee it is very clear that we have ambitions that the Bill can be made better.

Mr Winnick

No sweetheart deals then on this issue?

Chair

No. I think we have the answer. Just on the issue of instant messaging apps, is one of the concerns that you all had, together with Yahoo and Microsoft, that the legislation that is currently written could ban the use of these instant messaging services because of their end-to-end encryption? Is that one of the concerns that has been raised?

Simon Milner

There is certainly an issue around clarity as to what the provisions of the draft Bill entail in respect of the issue of encryption, but I would not suggest that we are concerned that certain services will, therefore, be banned. As with all matters of legislation, and you know this much better than we do, having certainty about what this actually means is extremely important.

Mr Jayawardena

Dr House, I wonder if I could first ask you one question before broadening it out to your colleagues. We have heard a lot in the press about the so-called Islamic State’s effective use of social media, yet Jared Cohen of Google has deemed them, “Not a tech savvy organisation”. How much of their success, if we can put it like that, do you attribute to their use of social media?

Dr House

I am afraid the success or otherwise of Islamic State outside the use of our platforms is beyond my level of expertise. I would say that we are extremely effective at removing both videos and accounts that are created by foreign terrorist groups and that we are extremely effective at removing re-uploads of those videos after they have been removed.

Mr Jayawardena

To take those videos, YouTube being a form of social media, do you believe that some of the success that these terrorists have had is based on their use of your platform? How much would you say that your platform has been used to lever new supporters into this satanic state?

Dr House

It is a constant cat-and-mouse game, as with any form of abuse of our services, but it is one that we are well equipped to meet.

Mr Jayawardena

Are you working with the Government or any community or youth-based organisations to provide an online alternative narrative?

Dr House

Absolutely, and that is something that we have not really talked about yet today. We have mentioned several times that there is a zero tolerance policy, and we should get the bad stuff down, but it is also extremely important that people are able to find good information, that when people are feeling isolated they go online and find a community of hope, not a community of harm. We have worked, as I mentioned before, with the Home Office, and with this Committee, and that has been a model for our work on counter-narratives around the world.

Mr Jayawardena

Do you have any examples of some of the work you have done?

Dr House

Yes, one of the primary examples would be “Abdullah-X”, which was a video series that we launched together with the European Union in 2013, which is a formerly radicalised man who appears in cartoon form and uses humour and the types of language that the people at risk of being radicalised connect with to draw them away from ideologies of terror.

Mr Jayawardena

How many people did that reach?

Dr House

I do not have the number to hand but I could write to you and provide it. It is worth saying, and I have said this a couple of times before, that this isn’t done, right? We are constantly looking at new ways to make sure that this is more effective. This year, we are running two pilot programmes. One is to make sure that these types of videos are more discoverable on YouTube. The other one is to make sure that when people put potentially damaging search terms into our search engine they also find this counter-narrative work.

Mr Jayawardena

Thank you. Mr Milner?

Simon Milner

Yes, we work with a number of organisations. I mentioned Imams Online earlier. In my home city of Bradford recently we took part in a training programme. I think Mr Pickles was there as well in the fine Cedar Court Hotel. I also want to emphasise this is not just about radicalisation of young Muslims. We also were concerned about extremist speech that is directed at Muslims. We have done some work with Tell MAMA, which is the major UK hotline for Islamophobic hate crime, to help ensure that it makes the best use of our platform to let people know that it exists, and also with the Community Security Trust, who are focused on anti-Semitic hate crime. A lot of focus is on radicalisation and the young Muslim community and absolutely we are looking to see what we can do there, but our OCCI initiative I announced earlier goes right across the spectrum and we want to have partnerships across the piece.

Nick Pickles

Just to follow on from that, I was in Belfast a few weeks ago with the Centre for Democracy and Peace Building, and one of the challenges is not just to focus on one type of extremism, but to look at broader social issues. What we did there was try to help community organisations and the Police Service of Northern Ireland to themselves come up with the most pressing issues. The important thing is while our companies can help with expertise, we are not the messengers and the people who are the most credible messengers are these community groups.

Mr Jayawardena

What more do you think we could all together be doing to create a more credible, positive message, working with communities, using the tools at the disposal of the state and, indeed, working with businesses who manage these platforms to provide alternatives to young people and make sure that their perhaps misguided views are addressed as swiftly as possible?

Nick Pickles

Just looking at some quotes, Melanie Smith from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue raised the question: can we use women who have returned from Syria as messengers to talk about what has happened there? I think that is a good question. Also, the role of Government communicating, and international aid work to communities—I think that there are different messengers for different communities. Our hope is that we can have more of them in every environment and that is why we work with the Active Change Foundation in Walthamstow right across to Belfast, to Bradford, to Scotland. It is a full spectrum approach.

Simon Milner

I would say that one of the things Government need to recognise, and perhaps you when you are interrogating Ministers, the need not always to beat up on Ministers as to why they are not doing more in terms of the voice of Government. The voice of Government does not work. It just does not work when it comes to counter-speech. Use research about what does work. Talk with Demos, talk with the ISD, talk with Peter Neumann and his team, and then use that. I am sure you always want to be evidence-based in your questioning, but use that to interrogate things like the Prevent strategy rather than just assuming that more money equals more effective.

Dr House

I do not have anything other than what my colleagues have said.

Chair

I am sorry, I missed that.

Dr House

I do not have anything new other than what my colleagues have raised.

Mr Jayawardena

Could I make one final request, Mr Milner and Mr Pickles? Dr House said that he would provide us with some further information on the number of people reached and, therefore, helped, we hope, by the resources that Google has deployed. I would be grateful if you would do the same with some of the examples you have talked about.

Simon Milner

We can follow up and write to you.

Mr Jayawardena

Thank you.

Chair

Before I come to your fellow Bradford citizen Naz Shah, on the issue of diversity in your organisation, one of the key features of trying to deal with the Daesh narrative is to have Arabic speakers and those from the community. What kind of numbers do you have, Mr Pickles? In your group of 100, how many would be either Arabic speakers or those who know and understand the community because, obviously, you and I may not do so?

Nick Pickles

No, and to reiterate it is more than 100. That is not an absolute figure. There is expertise from across the company. We absolutely have local language specialists looking at this—

Chair

I am talking about the 100. How many would be Arabic speakers?

Nick Pickles

I do not have that number to hand. I can investigate if it is possible. Across the company, we have a whole range of language support operating in multiple time zones, so they can address Indonesia as well.

Simon Milner

You would be very welcome to come and meet them. Some of them are based in our Dublin office, the Arabic-speaking team from a number of countries across the Middle East and North Africa. We do not publish a number of how many they are but, believe me, this is an area of strong investment.

Dr House

We have said publicly that we are actively recruiting Arabic speakers to increase the effectiveness of this team and this is the same as when we see other new threats. When we see revenge porn, for example, we hire experts in that who understand the types of harm but also understand what types of solutions are appropriate.

Naz Shah

A quick question: when you talked about removing videos—you can remove them and you make sure they do not come back up—are you tracing right back to the IP addresses or is it just the accounts?

Dr House

I would rather not go into the technical specificity so that people cannot figure out how to outwit our systems. Abuse of our systems is something that we have been familiar with since our inception as a company including getting people who are trying to commit, for example, basic financial fraud and preventing them from creating new accounts or being able to engage with our systems again. It is about similar lessons to the other technical challenges of abuse of our systems.

Naz Shah

While I appreciate you have a flag system, are any of you specific in talking about terrorism? For example, on Twitter, I know that I took lots of Twitter trolling from accounts when I was going for the election, and the amount of time it took me to get even one account removed was absolutely appalling. It took me days, if not weeks, to have them removed because the process that you have to go through, you are jumping through hoops and you are having to go back to a screen. It is not just a sequential order so that you can report something. Have you improved that in the last year, particularly Twitter, and how long on average does it take you to remove an account?

Nick Pickles

Absolutely. This is an area where we are always trying to strike a balance between making things simple for users and not increasing the number of reports in our system so that it slows down our response. We have absolutely invested in how we can make that quicker. I am sorry to hear of that experience. We do not have an average takedown because we try to focus on the most pressing cases. We will focus on violent threats and direct threats of violence before we will focus on offensive content, for example. We try to get through everything as fast as we can.

Naz Shah

Coming back to terrorism then, do you have something that is specific about, “This is terrorist material” so you prioritise it? To me, that would be higher up my agenda in terms of priority. How do you prioritise it?

Nick Pickles

For law enforcement, for example, and NGOs we have a specific form to report that kind of content through. For users we do not, and this is again one of the areas we keep under review in making sure that we are striking a balance. One of the challenges that we all have is whenever we provide users with controls, often they are used for people to try to get content taken down they disagree with. That is a challenge because it increases the number of reports that are inaccurate in our areas.

Naz Shah

The Jihadi net mums that the Chair—

Chair

Mumsnet for Jihadists.

Naz Shah

These kinds of accounts, if they are just user accounts you cannot remove them?

Nick Pickles

If they break our terms of service we will absolutely remove them and we will aim to remove them as quickly as possible.

Chair

Have you looked at that organisation?

Nick Pickles

It is not one I am familiar with but I will do following this appearance.

Chair

Okay, but it is that kind of information you expect the public to give you rather than your 100 people beavering away in Dublin or wherever they are?

Nick Pickles

The benefits of being a public platform and having large user bases is that users do report those accounts to us.

Chair

The point Naz Shah is making, which has been echoed by other people, is it takes too long for Twitter to act. She is not saying that you all do not act, it just takes too long to act. What are you doing about speeding that process up?

Nick Pickles

The reason why the figure 100 came into the public domain was because we tripled the size of the team working on things. We have already invested in the people. We continue to do so. We continue to invest in technology to help us find things. To follow Dr House, one of our challenges was how you stop people recreating accounts when you have suspended them. We started asking people for a mobile phone number to stop accounts with the same number coming back. We can use technology from other areas like spam to stop these accounts coming back, but it is an area we will continue to invest in.

Naz Shah

In terms of what you were talking about, particularly Simon, you were talking about working with Tell MAMA and other organisations. What I feel is coming across here is very much like a denial of responsibility and passing it back, which I struggle with. Aside from working with people that are already there, what are you doing as initiatives, you as social media, given your corporate social responsibility that my colleague earlier touched on? What are you doing in trying to invest in this area? Because I am not comfortable with what I have heard today.

Simon Milner

Ms Shah, I am sorry you feel like that and I would be very happy to follow up with you afterwards if you think there are some things that we could perhaps help with in your constituency. Just to be clear, we take this issue incredibly seriously in terms of what is happening on our platform. We are investing in it. We are making sure our reporting is effective. We are making sure we have the right kind of relationship, for instance, with the CTIRU in the Home Office, who can also flag cases to us very quickly. We recognise from the research that others have done that people do not typically just get radicalised online. It is a combination of in person and online contact. Working with community-based organisations like Imams Online, who can understand the context of what is happening with young people in their communities, so that they can address the online bit or the Facebook bit of what is happening in their community is something that we can help them with.

Chair

Indeed. Ms Shah, before you came in the companies set out their strategy, but we will write to them again. I think Ms Shah has raised some very important points. Perhaps you could write to us again specifically on the points that she has raised. I think that would be very helpful.

Simon Milner

Absolutely.

Chair

We are running out of time, colleagues. Stuart McDonald first.

Stuart C. McDonald

Yes, I will be as quick as I can. Dr House, could you say very briefly what the trusted flagger programme is that applies to YouTube?

Dr House

Yes, absolutely. One of the challenges we have is despite having a billion users they might not understand how to flag effectively. The example that always comes to my mind is that our most flagged video ever is a Justin Bieber video simply because people dislike it. We are confronted with how we increase the number of high-quality flags that we have, so we work with both Government agencies, including the CTIRU at the Home Office and Europol, but also NGOs to help them understand what our community guidelines are and give them additional tools for flagging. What we have found is that whereas the general public has about a one-third accuracy rate for flagging, these trusted flaggers tend to have around a 90% accuracy rate. It is much easier for us to prioritise their flags and to act quickly on them.

Stuart C. McDonald

Is there a way in which you could add some members of the public to that? For example, if there are members of the public who have made four or five flags and they all turn out to be well founded, they then are given greater priority?

Dr House

Yes, we would absolutely consider that.

Stuart C. McDonald

Because one of the things I picked up speaking to the young folk in Bradford last week was a frustration that they make flags and yet nothing happens. Is there a similar scheme for Facebook and Twitter?

Simon Milner

We do not have a trusted flagger process in the same way. We do have arrangements with CTIRU and similar organisations in other Governments to flag things to us. We also have relationships with safety organisations who can let us know when they think our normal reporting processes have not worked, as in they think we have come to the wrong judgment about a particular piece of content. On the whole, we want people to use our standard reporting features because when you report from Facebook that report will get to the right person with the right language expertise who is an expert in the issue that you are reporting. It is by far the most effective way of letting us know about a piece of content. Because every report is looked at by an individual, then we can be sure that we are in the vast majority of situations getting those judgments right. Not always, unfortunately. Of course, we would love to be perfect, but we are not.

Chair

What are your flags like?

Nick Pickles

We do not have a trusted flagger system but what we do have is, similar to Facebook, a dedicated portal for groups like CTIRU to use. We also have the safety expert organisations to bring things to our attention. They can report directly to us as well. Then, as I say, we have invested in back end. This challenge—the YouTube example is a pertinent one—of people reporting things they do not like and that they disagree with is something that has required a significant amount of investment to try to make some, I think the phrase is “signal to noise ratio”. It is to try to bring out good reports from the ones of people saying, “This is offensive, I don’t like it”. That is where the real value of what has become counter-speech comes in: the response to something that you do not like is not to take it down, it is to challenge it. It is to challenge the idea that underpins that narrative, and that is where we will tackle the underlying social issues that lead to some of the issues we have heard about today.

Stuart C. McDonald

Finally, one last question. I was interested to read Google’s head of ideas, Jared Cohen. He was talking about forcing Daesh from the open web and hounding them from the traditional web. Given the scale of the money and organisation that goes into peddling Daesh views and extremism, is that realistic? What does success look like here? Is it possible to drive them from the web? How do we monitor success or how do we know that you guys are getting it right?

Simon Milner

This is not something where we would expect to be able to make our judgment. We rely on others, and if you read the reports from the Quilliam Foundation or Peter Neumann’s team at King’s, they will tell you that Facebook has become a hostile place for Daesh. That for us is good news. It does not mean that they do not try; absolutely they will try. We want to share what we have learnt about how we have made Facebook a hostile place with other platforms. There are many more platforms, of course—social media is not just the three companies sitting here—and they are being created all the time. It is understandable that those people who want to use this kind of technology for evil will go to those places where they put less resource into it. They do not come and give evidence to Select Committees anywhere. It is hard to know who they are.

James Berry

Daesh is probably mounting the most successful publicity campaign for an evil regime since Goebbels and the Nazis in the 1930s and they are using your platforms to do it. Against that effort by Daesh, your companies have some of the top tech brains in the world and you are some of the most profitable companies in the world. I know that Google, or Alphabet at least, today became the most valuable company in the world. Are you seriously telling this Committee that with all that expertise and with all the power your companies have you cannot do more in the fight against Daesh?

Dr House

I think it is always possible to do more. I have outlined some of the things that we are already looking at this year. Our discussions with the Home Office, our discussions with this Committee, are always good ways for us to understand what more can be done. As I have outlined, we already are doing a lot and this is something that is not new to us. We have been working on this topic for years. I will repeat what Simon said earlier. We do want to be humble about what we are able to do. We cannot solve all of the world’s problems, but if we can make our platforms a hostile place for extremism, then we are committed to doing so and we are committed to working with the other platforms who are not here today to make sure that they have the same skills.

Simon Milner

I reject what you are suggesting, that Daesh have been successful because of our platform. Absolutely, that is not the case. We have worked very hard to disrupt what they do in partnership with other organisations also committed to disrupting them, and we will continue to strive to do better. Of course, we can always do more and we are always trying to learn, but I reject the suggestion that we do not care about the issue. That is far from the truth.

James Berry

That was not the suggestion. I am sure you could do more, but you may have reasons of principle or cost for not doing more. There is plainly technologically more. Facebook ban nipples and it causes offence to women with breast cancer or to women who are breastfeeding that you have technology that bans pictures of nipples, yet terrorist content from ISIS sometimes seems to get through the net. Why is that?

Simon Milner

Mr Berry, with respect, that is not true. We do allow pictures of breastfeeding and we allow people to post pictures of their mastectomy scars. We do not allow nudity but we do not use technology to find nudity. We rely on human review of reports. There is no technology that spots female nipples.

Chair

Mr Pickles, what do you say to Mr Berry?

Nick Pickles

It is a useful point and I absolutely echo it—numerous academics have looked at this question of automating an algorithm to find this content, particularly dealing with text and language. I think that is something that is a distant hope for the future but is incredibly difficult to do now. Speaking of doing more, as we have heard, we all look to do more. J. M. Berger, who is with the George Washington University programme on extremism—again, these are the people to validate our efforts—published a report last March that said that the IS-supporting social network on Twitter has been significantly constrained by the suspension campaign. I think it is possible to measure success, but we are not the people to be the auditors, if you like. It is for academics to talk about this. Finally, social media is one part of the ecosystem. There is still face-to-face interaction. There is still the question of territory. Daesh controlling territory is, as recognised by academics, an important part of its propaganda.

James Berry

All three of your companies invest a huge amount of money in making yourselves more profitable and in generating more advertising revenue and you have been very successful. You are all very popular in the services you provide. Can you give this Committee an idea of how high up your list of priorities combating ISIS’s use of your platforms is?

Chair

Obviously, you have covered this in the earlier evidence that you gave, but just a word is fine.

Dr House

I would just say it is of fundamental importance. We do not want our platform to be an unsafe place and our ongoing success is critical.

Simon Milner

Keeping people safe on Facebook is our number one priority. ISIS is part of that, but it is absolutely not the only extremist organisation or behaviour that we care about.

Nick Pickles

Absolutely this is taken seriously across the top ranks of the company.

Mr Umunna

The issue, to pick up what Mr Berry just asked you, is that ultimately if you were to dedicate more resource to taking action and doing more, as Mr Berry has just described, you would probably need to put, to take Twitter’s example, more than 100 people on to your team to keep a check on what is happening in relation to 320 million users. Part of your challenge, would you not accept, is that while I do not know the extent to which you sit on your parent and subsidiary company boards, your directors, your strategic management, have a legal obligation to maximise profitability but you also have obligations in respect of public safety? Would you accept you do not always get that right?

Chair

Mr Milner, a quick answer?