Extremist content online: What would you take down?

Government plans to remove online extremist content will "backfire" and fail to prevent terrorist attacks, Sky News has been told.

Just hours after the London Bridge attack in June, Theresa May made it clear that she believed the availability of extremist content online was partly to blame.

"We cannot allow this ideology the safe space it needs to breed. Yet that is precisely what the internet - and the big companies that provide internet-based services - provide," she had claimed.

Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary, announced plans during conference season that would see people who repeatedly view terrorist content online jailed for up to 15 years .

But these criticisms and plans are flawed according to Jamie Bartlett, the director at the centre for the analysis of social media at the Demos think tank.

Those who view extremist content online could be jailed for 15 years

In an interview with Sky News, Mr Bartlett said: "Despite all of the protestations that this material online is radicalising people and turning them into terrorists and extremists, the actual role that online material plays still isn't particularly clear.

"The truth is that a lot of the material that they share is not actually illegal at all."

Instead, it was often comprised of "news reports about perceived injustices in Palestine, stuff that you could never censor in a free society."

In August, YouTube was criticised after deleting video evidence relating to potential war crimes in Syria as part of its work to remove terrorist content and propaganda from the platform.

Mr Bartlett added: "Part of the problem is we are putting a lot of pressure on the tech firms to remove content, and they are tending now to err on the side of safety, which means they would rather remove the stuff than leave it up.

"I don't think we should consider removing this content to be so vital in the fight against extremism and terrorism.

Tech companies take on extremism.

"Material that is produced by a terrorist organisation, or material that is directly inciting people to commit violence - that should be removed.

"The stuff that's underneath that threshold which is offensive or nasty - hateful even - leave it. Don't try and remove that. Don't always try to inch forward.

"This is what the Government is doing, their extremism strategy, where they're trying to remove offensive content, extreme content, that's going to backfire."

(SKY NEWS)