Combat ISIS With Facebook 'Like Attack'?
Source: Stephanie Mlot
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg thinks the best way to combat ISIS is to kill 'em with kindness.
In a Facebook post, Sandberg said her goal at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland was to focus on three areas "where we believe we can have the most positive impact — connectivity, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality."
But the Lean In author made headlines with the story of a German anti-neo-Nazi group that launched "a 'Like' attack" on the Facebook page of the National Democratic Party of Germany (a.k.a. neo-Nazis).
"That page is filled with intolerance," Sandberg said. But rather than "scream in protest," the group convinced thousands of people to "Like" the page (in an ironic sort of way) and post messages of tolerance.
"So when you got to the page, they completely changed the content," Sandberg explained. "And what was a page filled with hatred and intolerance was then tolerance and messages of hope."
But could the same tactic be employed to fight ISIS? "The best thing to speak against recruitment by ISIS are the voices of people who were recruited by ISIS, understand what the true experience is, have escaped, and come back to tell the truth," Sandberg said on Wednesday.
Earlier this month, The Guardian reported that White House officials met with execs from Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, and others about how Silicon Valley could combat terrorism and ISIS. Sandberg, specifically, reportedly discussed Facebook's suicide prevention tool and administration officials wondered it could be used to flag those who were becoming radicalized.
For now, Facebook is sticking to its no-tolerance policy against hate and prejudice on the platform.
"We do everything we can do take all of it down," she continued. "Not just the posts and the calls for violence, but the people who are perpetrators of it. They're off Facebook."
Unfortunately, the company's efforts haven't entirely blotted out online antagonism; as the COO said: "We all know that as soon as you take something down, another one pops up."
A day before her appearance in Davos, Sandberg was in Berlin to announce the Online Civil Courage Initiative, meant to combat "extremism and hate speech on the Internet" in Europe.
Facebook is also pledging more than 1 million euros ($1.09 million) to financially support organizations that fight online extremism, and help researchers, companies, and governments find ways to understand and disrupt this problem.
"Amplifying those voices—counter-speech to the speech that perpetrating hate, is, we think, by far the best answer," Sandberg said.
Countries like Germany and France have stricter rules regarding offensive comments than the U.S., which is governed by the First Amendment.
The only woman on The Transformation of Tomorrow panel of five, Sandberg was joined in Switzerland by Rwandan President Paul Kagame, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Mahindra & Mahindra chairman Anand Mahindra, and OpenGov CEO Zachary Bookman (pictured above).
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