Facebook ‘likes’ can stop ISIS recruiters: Sheryl Sandberg

The comment from the COO comes after the fact that Silicon Valley has been up in arms against Islamic terrorist organisations. Just two weeks back, Silicon Valley’s leading executives joined a closed-door meeting with America’s most senior security staff and law enforcement officials to discuss how to combat ISIS’s recruiting efforts online

The comment from the COO comes after the fact that Silicon Valley has been up in arms against Islamic terrorist organisations. Just two weeks back, Silicon Valley’s leading executives joined a closed-door meeting with America’s most senior security staff and law enforcement officials to discuss how to combat Isis’s recruiting efforts online (Facebook)

Facebook's chief operating officer (COO) Sheryl Sandberg has said that Facebook 'likes' could be a good way to fight ISIS recruiters and the group itself.

The comment from the COO comes after the fact that Silicon Valley has been up in arms against Islamic terrorist organisations. Just two weeks back, Silicon Valley's leading executives joined a closed-door meeting with America's most senior security staff and law enforcement officials to discuss how to combat ISIS's recruiting efforts online. Agents for the terrorist organisation have increasingly turned to platforms such as Facebook, Alphabet's YouTube and Twitter.

According to a Guardian report, the COO was at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland when she suggested some observations about fighting ISIS and other terrorist groups.

Sandberg gave the example of one neo-Nazi party on Facebook. She said that how people with good hearts went onto the page and offered positivity -- a "like-attack," as she called it -- rather than the destructive hate speech.

"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 have come back to tell the truth," she said. "Counter-speech to the speech that is perpetuating hate we think by far is the best answer."

The news report also quoted Alphabet's director of Google Ideas, Jared Cohen, talking about efforts to force ISIS agents off the public internet.

"It could be where we can see greater short-term wins," Cohen was quoted as saying.

The Guardian had also reported that US officials had asked Sandberg some time back about Facebook's technology that allows users to flag friends who are posting suicidal thoughts on the platform.

After Sandberg explained it, tech executives in the room had discussed if a similar system could be developed for flagging social media users showing signs of radicalisation.