Facebook launches anti online-extremism campaign in the UK

Facebook is launching the Online Civil Courage Initiative (OCCI) in the UK, a programme aimed at countering online extremism and hate speech, in partnership with the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.

The initiative was announced jointly in London by Facebook's chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, Strategic Dialogue's CEO Sasha Havlicek, and founding partners Brendan Cox, husband of murdered MP Jo Cox and head of the Jo Cox Foundation, Mark Gardner from the Community Security Trust, Fiyaz Mughal at Tell MAMA and Shaukat Warraich from Imams Online.

The OCCI was being set up to offer "financial and marketing support to UK NGOs working to counter online extremism" and will bring together experts to develop best practices and tools, including training for NGOs to help them monitor and respond to extremist content, a support desk to allow direct contact with Facebook, marketing support for counterspeech campaigns including Facebook advertising credits.

It will also offer knowledge sharing with NGOs, government and other online services; and financial support for academic research on online and offline patterns of extremism.

The OCCI launch in the UK comes after similar launches in Germany in January 2016 and in France in March 2017.

Also in the UK, the OCCI will share campaigns, experiences and advice and challenges online through Facebook Groups and the OCCI's UK Facebook page.

According to Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's chief operating officer, there was ''no place for hate or violence'' on Facebook and that ''we all have a part to play'' in fighting terror.

Groups including the Jo Cox Foundation and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue would get advertising credits to promote their messages to individuals that might be at risk of radicalisation.

The advertisements, it was hoped would be able to counter a barrage of extremist propaganda, which had come into focus following recent attacks in London and Manchester.