Tech companies move to target terrorist propaganda online

The move by the technology companies, which is expected to begin in early 2017, aims to assuage government concerns — and derail proposed new federal legislation — over social media content that is seen as increasingly driving terrorist recruitment and radicalization, while also balancing free-speech issues.

Under the new partnership, the companies promised to share among themselves "the most extreme and egregious terrorist images and videos we have removed from our services — content most likely to violate all our respective companies' content policies," according to a joint announcement Monday evening.

Twitter, for example, says users "may not promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability or disease."

The material still required review by a team at Twitter before the accounts could be disabled.

"Since the middle of 2015, we have suspended more than 360,000 accounts for violating Twitter's policy on violent threats and the promotion of terrorism," said Sinead McSweeney, Twitter's vice president of public policy.

Federal prosecutors accused him of posting a series of photographs on his Facebook account to praise the death of a Jordanian pilot who was burned to death by the Islamic State group — showing him before, during and after his death, including an image of him engulfed in flames, according to the complaint.