STATEMENT BY UK, FRANCE AND ITALY ON THE LEADERS’ MEETING ON PREVENTING TERRORIST USE OF THE INTERNET, 20 SEPTEMBER 2017, NEW YORK In the presence of Prime Minister May of the United Kingdom, President Macron of France, and Prime Minister Gentiloni of Italy, leaders from industry, like-minded countries, the UN and EU met today in the margins of the UN General Assembly to re-affirm our collective determination to prevent the internet from being misused by terrorist groups and individuals. We agreed that terrorist use of the internet is a global issue that needs innovative, international solutions. We have committed to working together to prevent the dissemination of terrorist content online and the use of the internet by terrorists to radicalise, recruit, inspire or incite. No individual nation state can respond to this threat alone. The response must be global and it must be collaborative. The threat of terrorist content online can only be effectively countered by the tech industry, governments and non-governmental organisations working together at significantly greater pace and scale. Further to the recent G7 Taormina Statement on the fight against terrorism and violent extremism, the joint French-British action plan on internet security, G20 Summit declarations, and existing initiatives of the EU Internet Forum, those present today reiterated support for the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, launched by Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube on 26 June. Research indicates that over two thirds of the dissemination of new terrorist content takes place within two hours of release. Recognising this, we have set the challenge to industry, working collaboratively through the Forum, to develop solutions to remove material within 1-2 hours of upload, with the wider objective of preventing such material from being uploaded in the first place. We have also challenged industry to pursue the development of technical tools in order to ensure that individuals tempted by violent extremism are not exposed to content that reinforces their extremist inclination – so-called ‘algorithmic confinement’. As leaders of the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT), Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube have emphasised their shared ambition to prevent terrorists from exploiting the internet to radicalise, recruit and spread propaganda, and to protect their users from terrorists and violent extremists online. They have committed to a range of platform-specific and Forum-wide efforts to better tackle terrorist abuse of open platforms, including exploring artificial intelligence and machine learning to accelerate the identification of terrorist content; building on their hash sharing database of known terrorist content to help more companies to detect and prevent re-upload of that content; and other initiatives to support smaller companies build capabilities for tackling terrorist abuse of their platforms. To deliver these aims, they have reinforced their commitment to a work programme which includes: