“One is to make sure these types of views are more discoverable. “The other is to make sure when people put potentially damaging search terms into our search engine they also find these counter narratives.” Governments and other agencies have recognised the importance of "counter-narratives" in combating extremism online - such as propaganda videos by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, also known as Isis- by encouraging moderate Muslims or other groups to challenge terrorist ideologies. • Isil releases beheading video featuring Paris attackers Dr House told the Commons’ home affairs select committee that Google removed 14 million videos from its YouTube site in 2014 for a range of reasons including terrorist content and for breaking other rules. The company received 100,000 “flags” from members of the public about content they consider inappropriate. Nick Pickles, from Twitter, said the micro-blogging site has taken down tens of thousands of violent extremist accounts in the last 12 months. Twitter, which has 320 million users, employs “more than 100” people working in teams to deal with inappropriate use of the site, he said. Keith Vaz MP, the committee chairman, asked Dr House and Simon Milner, of Facebook, how many people they employed in “hit squads” to remove terrorist and extremist material. However, both companies declined to reveal figures publicly. A Google spokeswoman said the pilot project referred to by Dr House would bring up counter-narrative messages in "AdWords" - the sponsored links which are returned at the top of a Google search - and not the search results themselves. Dr House said later: "We offer Google AdWords Grants to NGOs so that meaningful counter-speech ads can be surfaced in response to search queries like 'join Isis'."
Google has unveiled a pilot scheme in which its search engine would return anti-radicalisation links to anyone typing in extremism-related words. Dr Anthony House, a senior Google executive, revealed that the company is “working on counter-narratives around the world…When people put potentially damaging search terms into our search engine they (will) also find these counter narratives.” The project will bring up these different narratives through ‘AdWords’ (Google's sponsored links), rather than the search results themselves. Dr House said that Google would be offering AdWords grants to non-governmental organisations (NGOs) so that they could produce “meaningful counter-speech ads”, which would appear in response to search queries such as ‘join ISIS’.