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Alphabet's (GOOGL) Google Builds Terrorism Moderation Tool

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Alphabet’s (GOOGL - Free Report) Google continues to make strong endeavors toward the refinement of its content and to comply with the new anti-extremism measures.

Reportedly, the company’s research and development unit, Jigsaw, is developing a free terrorism moderation tool for smaller websites in collaboration with the UN-backed initiative - Tech Against Terrorism.

The latest move is in line with the new legislation in the United Kingdom and the European Union against illegal and terrorism-related online content.

EU’s Digital Services Act came into force in November 2022, and the Online Safety bill of the UK is set to become law this year.

The agenda behind both Digital Services Act and Online Safety Bill is to force internet companies to remove illegal or extremist content from their platforms.

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Google is focusing more on the smaller websites as they are less equipped to tackle illegal content and thus, they become the targets of terrorists.

Since content moderation becomes challenging for small firms due to limited resources, they become the point of exploitation for terrorist groups.

With the new tool, Google strives to aid small websites in the next step of the process. Also, it is designed to help human moderators make decision about content marked as illegal or harmful.

The tool takes data from a database of suspected terrorist content, which is collected by the non-profit Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism.

On the back of the new moderation tool, small as well as medium-sized firms will be able to take action on URLs and hashes that exist in counter-terrorism databases.

All these measures will prevent these websites from getting penalized under the strict laws introduced by the UK and EU to police online content.

Hence, Google is likely to witness strong adoption of its underlined tool.

Internet Companies Taking Initiatives

As the EU becomes stricter regarding harmful content on social media platforms, internet companies like Alphabet and Meta Platforms (META - Free Report) are also making strong efforts to come up with new software and advance their algorithms in order to improve content.

The latest move by Alphabet is the testament to the same.

Meta Platforms also introduced an open-source anti-terrorism detection software last month.

Notably, the software helps the other platforms match illegal or harmful content to existing images or videos in the database, with the help of which they will be able to mark that content for urgent human review.

Zacks Rank & Stocks to Consider

Currently, Alphabet carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

Some better-ranked stocks in the broader Zacks Computer & Technology sector are Arista Networks (ANET - Free Report) and Agilent Technologies (A - Free Report) . While Arista Networks sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), Agilent carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) at present. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Arista Networks has lost 16.7% in the past year. The long-term earnings growth rate for ANET is currently projected at 17.5%.

Agilent has lost 7.9% in the past year. A’s long-term earnings growth rate is currently projected at 10%.

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