OECD Joins Christchurch Call To Action To Eliminate Terrorist And Violent Extremist Content Online

The OECD has joined the Christchurch Call to Action to Eliminate Terrorist and Violent Extremist Content Online, adding its support to an international coalition of stakeholders working to prevent terrorists and violent extremists from exploiting the Internet.

The Christchurch Call is a commitment by governments and technology companies to combat extremist content online, put in place after 51 people were killed at two mosques in the New Zealand city of Christchurch in a brutal terror attack that was livestreamed on social media.

Since hosting the 2019 meeting of world leaders, tech company CEOs and civil society organisations that resulted in the Christchurch Call, the OECD has been driving a multi-stakeholder process to standardise how online platforms publish information about the terrorist and violent extremist content (TVEC) that appears on their services and the policies and procedures they have in place to address it. Following the Christchurch Call Second Anniversary Summit, co-chaired last week by French President Emmanuel Macron and New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, the OECD is today announcing its formal support for the Christchurch Call.

“We have seen all too often the real-world harm that terrorist and violent extremist content online causes,” said OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría. “But both companies and countries are struggling to find ways to combat this while protecting fundamental freedoms and human rights. Joining the Christchurch Call and continuing to advance our work in this area is what the OECD is all about: like-minded governments, in consultation with experts from business, civil society and academia, collaborating to improve the evidence base and help to build better policies for better lives.”

By formally joining the Christchurch Call, the OECD can collaborate more closely with the Call Community, adding its voice to underscore the imperative of collective action and ensuring that OECD outputs will be used most effectively to drive forward the Christchurch Call’s objectives.

A 2020 OECD report on the approaches to TVEC online taken by the world’s top 50 online platforms highlighted the need for more, and more consistent, reporting. Current Approaches to Terrorist and Violent Extremist Content among the Global Top 50 Online Content-Sharing Services revealed that only five of the top 50 platforms were issuing transparency reports on TVEC and that, even among those five, the platforms differed substantially in how and what was reported. The dearth of reports, and the lack of comparability among them, are critical barriers to assessing the industry's efforts to counter terrorist and violent extremist content online and their impact on fundamental freedoms.

In addition to a follow-up report on the top 50 platforms, the OECD is developing a Voluntary Transparency Reporting Framework for TVEC online, which will include a standardised reporting template. The new framework will make it possible to aggregate and compare reported information on terrorist and violent extremist content across platforms, while helping to address the inefficiency of regulatory fragmentation. This work directly advances the Christchurch Call’s objective of improving transparency while remaining true to the principles of a free, open and secure Internet.

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