Core Concepts
Altitude is an open-source tool designed to help small and medium-sized online platforms more effectively identify and remove terrorist and violent extremist content on their platforms.
Abstract
The content discusses the development of Altitude, an open-source tool created by Jigsaw to assist small and medium-sized online platforms in moderating terrorist and violent extremist content (TVEC).
Key insights:
Smaller platforms are increasingly targeted for sharing TVEC but often lack the resources and tools to effectively remove it in a timely manner, as required by new regulations.
Jigsaw conducted interviews with 11 platforms of varying sizes and found that their preparedness to manage TVEC was not directly related to their size or user base. Even mature platforms sometimes lacked the necessary signals to proactively identify harmful content.
Altitude is designed to help these under-resourced platforms by providing features like content matching against databases of known TVEC, bulk content actions, and image blurring. It leverages existing technologies like Meta's hashing and Google's Prisma design system.
Jigsaw is partnering with Tech Against Terrorism to maintain and expand Altitude, which will provide free, bespoke onboarding support to interested platforms.
Future development plans include adding more specialized databases and native translation capabilities, as well as continued collaboration between platforms, civil society, and regulators.
Stats
"small platforms are increasingly targeted as a means of sharing this content but are often not included in current crisis response mechanisms, allowing the content to remain online for longer."
"the EU's Digital Services Act and the EU Regulation on Terrorist Content Online, has emerged that not only proscribes this content but specifies timeframes in which it must be removed — sometimes granting platforms as little as an hour."
Quotes
"Even relatively mature services still sometimes lacked signals to proactively identify harms on their platform."
"We also saw that, while they may eventually prefer to integrate all tools into an in-house platform, a separate interface for dedicated harms could provide a way to get started in an under-resourced environment."