Inside Two Years of Turmoil at Big Tech's Anti-Terrorism Group
Vice presidents from Meta, YouTube, Twitter, and Microsoft gathered over Zoom in March 2023 to discuss whether to allow TikTok, one of their companies’ most fearsome competitors, into their exclusive club.
The four executives comprised the board of the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT)—where companies share tips intended to prevent their platforms from becoming hotbeds for terrorists—and they knew that TikTok needed help keeping extremist propaganda off its platform. TikTok had passed a training program they required and had addressed their questions about its ties to China. But people briefed on the discussions say the board still worried about the possibility of TikTok abusing its membership in some way that benefited the Chinese government and undermined free expression. On top of that, at the time US lawmakers were considering a ban of the app, and more content moderation mishaps for TikTok likely would add to the heat. The board ultimately didn’t approve TikTok.
A WIRED investigation into GIFCT reveals that TikTok’s bid to join the consortium failed because two of the four executives on the board abstained from voting on its application. A week later, on the fourth anniversary of a deadly terrorist attack in Christchurch, New Zealand, researchers blasted TikTok for hosting footage celebrating the rampage. These were the very videos that would have been easily flagged and removed had TikTok’s rivals granted it access to their group’s threat-spotting technology.
