Six of the nine independent experts on the advisory board of the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism—a consortium run by several of the biggest US tech companies—resigned on Monday, according to a letter seen by WIRED and interviews with four of the people.
The tensions between the independent advisory committee and the GIFCT date back to an email the counterterrorism and free speech experts received in July from Meta’s Nell McCarthy, a vice president overseeing content policy. For years, the group had advised the GIFCT on how to prevent platforms from becoming havens for the radical organizations and individuals blamed for some of the world’s worst mass violence.
But McCarthy wrote that while the consortium welcomed the experts’ insights on violent trends, it no longer desired their scrutiny on the effectiveness of Big Tech’s efforts to curtail violence. Meta and other leaders wanted to “refresh” the 6-year-old independent advisory committee the experts sat on, she wrote. Meta serves as chair of GIFCT’s operating board this year, giving it outsized influence over policy changes, though other companies on the panel must ultimately approve.
New additions to the rotating advisory committee had previously been elected by current members; under the plan laid out in July, they would instead be picked by tech companies. The committee would be barred from weighing in on key topics such as the consortium’s performance and making recommendations together as a group. Its role as a watchdog would be neutered, advisers believed.
In their resignation letter, the departing members of the committee wrote that their appeals against the plan had been “ignored” and that, in turn, they had “lost confidence in the GIFCT’s ability to deliver effectively on its founding mission” to prevent terrorists from exploiting online services. “We all know that a body that cannot scrutinise, take a position, or evaluate is not an advisory body at all,” the letter stated. “It is decoration and accountability theatre.”
Meta deferred comment on the resignations to the GIFCT. An unsigned statement sent to WIRED by a GIFCT spokesperson on behalf of the consortium’s leadership and the Meta-chaired operating board says the proposed changes have been “informed by several rounds of feedback” and are not yet final. They came out of discussions on “how to more effectively engage civil society and governments for substantive input” as “multi-stakeholderism is a core principle” for the GIFCT.
The consortium has about 35 members; other long-time board members include Microsoft and YouTube. A small staff alerts members to violent content, helps them exchange threat intelligence, and commissions research on countering extremism. While the coordination has helped some platforms combat problematic content, critics believe the group isn’t living up to its potential.
A WIRED investigation in 2024 uncovered several issues with GIFCT, including Meta delaying TikTok’s membership bid and poor relations between the companies at the helm and the unpaid independent advisory body. It also revealed failures in the tip-sharing database the consortium oversees to coordinate takedowns of problematic content.
The dismantling of the advisory group threatens to deteriorate the organization’s work further at a time when balancing free expression and online safety has become more challenging. Generative AI tools have simplified content creation but imposed limited guardrails.
Extremist content, including some that is now AI-generated, that promotes organizations such as Islamic State remains a persistent issue. Newer nihilistic collectives have turned to AI-supported scams such as sexploitation to coerce young victims into carrying out violence and abuse. Several AI chatbots have been accused of facilitating violence.
“A Shame”
The experts who resigned include university researchers and representatives of civil society organizations. They had agreed with McCarthy on the need for changes to improve the results of the decade-old anti-terrorism consortium. But they believe the proposal, which could be finalized soon, amounts to a step backward.
“There won’t be critical voices raising concerns about what GIFCT is doing or is not doing,” one of the departing experts says. “It may seem politically convenient for them to abolish the independent advisory committee, but they are going to regret it in the longer term.”
Another calls it “a shame” that the tech companies “instead of engaging and building better evaluation and transparency are pursuing a rollback of independence that was already weak to begin with.”
Both of the people spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation from the Trump administration, which has denied visas to people it believes are working to unfairly censor online content, and Republicans in Congress, who have been investigating supposed censorship groups. While the GIFCT hasn’t been targeted, both it and an adviser’s organization were mentioned in a February report from the House Judiciary Committee.
In a meeting soon after, the advisory committee questioned consortium leaders, including from Meta, about their plans to operate in what appeared to be a fraught political environment for content moderation, according to two of the advisers present. The committee didn’t get clear answers, the people say, but got pushback for raising questions considered beyond its purview. About three months later came McCarthy’s July email.
WIRED couldn’t immediately learn why four of the expert advisers did not join the others in resigning. The committee also includes representatives from the UN and a handful of governments such as Canada and the EU, and it’s unclear whether any of them will also exit. But last Friday, the entire panel of 17 members sent a letter, seen by WIRED, to McCarthy disagreeing with her plan to curtail their group’s independence and input.
When the consortium formed the advisory committee in 2020, its then-executive director Nick Rasmussen said he had encouraged many of the inaugural members to be “the conscience of the organization” and “if necessary, to call bullshit.”
In public reports, the committee has credited its input for helping grow the consortium, expand the types of tips shared, and increase the transparency of its work. But the people who resigned believe they were often consulted too late to meaningfully influence most of the consortium’s projects.
The proposal calls for transitioning the body’s name from “committee” to “community” and forbidding it from evaluating the consortium’s governance, budget, operations, and the work of individual member companies, according to the resignation letter.
New experts recruited to the “community,” regardless of who appoints them, will quickly come to the same conclusion as those who resigned, one of the people says. “We will be on a merry-go round. It may just be that the GIFCT model has run its course.”