YouTube has announced a plan "to fight online terror". One of the things YouTube says it will do is to find dangerous videos and delete them. This includes videos on how to make fire-bombs and other deadly devices. Google, which owns YouTube, announced four things it would do to tackle the problem of dangerous videos. Kent Walker, Google's senior vice president, called these things: "Four steps we're taking today to fight online terror." The first step is to ask users to identify or flag videos that might help terrorists. The second step is to remove the videos. The third step is to focus on videos that could make people become terrorists. Finally, step four is to show "anti-terrorism" adverts.
There are many problems with making the four steps work. Perhaps the biggest problem is that it is a huge task to monitor so many videos on YouTube. Over one hour of video is uploaded to YouTube each second. The advertising company AdWeek said one hundred years' of video is uploaded every 10 days. Another problem is that many of the videos Google wants to target are not illegal. Mr Walker said even a BBC news video could be used by terrorists in the wrong way. Walker said Google would use software that will learn what content breaks its guidelines. A further problem is how to delete videos that do not break YouTube's guidelines but still have content that could turn people towards terrorism.
