Tech giants to discuss online extremism with EU officials over dinner

The European Union will ask major US technology companies including Facebook, Google and Twitter to help tackle online extremism at a meeting on Wednesday, officials said. The dinner meeting in Luxembourg comes amid rising concerns about the use of the Internet to radicalise young European Muslims who have travelled to fight in Syria and Iraq. Interior ministers from the 28 EU countries and officials from the European Commission will meet representatives from Internet search giant Google, social media leaders Facebook and Twitter, and software pioneer Microsoft, a commission spokesman told AFP.

Google, Twitter, Facebook and Microsoft representatives will discuss concerns about online radicalization and jihadist propaganda with EU officials at an informal dinner on Wednesday. The dinner attendees will discuss challenges posed by terrorists’ use of the Internet and possible responses, the European Commission said. They will also discuss tools and techniques to respond to terrorist online activities, with particular regard to the development of specific “counter-narrative initiatives,” which are attempts to respond to the ideology of militant groups, Commission spokesman Michele Cercone said. The tech companies will meet Commission representatives and ministers of the 28 EU member states in Luxembourg. “The Internet and social media play a profoundly positive role in our lives and societies. However, they are also used by violent extremists to advance their aims, whether through engagement, propaganda, radicalization or recruitment,” Cercone said. The Commission is particularly concerned about the recruiting of EU citizens to fight for radical Islamist groups in the Middle-East, the so-called foreign fighters, as well as calls for ‘electronic Jihad’ that the EU is facing, he said.