Statement on October 16 Paris Attack

Statement on October 16 Paris Attack
19 October 2020 GIFCT
In News

On October 16, a schoolteacher was murdered on a street in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, a suburb of Paris. The attack has been declared an act of terrorism by French government officials. GIFCT expresses its deepest condolences to the victim’s family, friends, and students and to the people of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine and France.

An image of the victim was posted to some online platforms in the event’s aftermath. Per standard operating procedure in such instances, GIFCT companies worked together in real time, sharing information and “hashes” of the image and its derivatives to help each platform address the content in a manner consistent with each company’s policies and procedures. As the perpetrator did not livestream the attack and content was of a low-virality nature, the GIFCT did not initiate its Content Incident Protocol in response.

GIFCT’s role is to work with members to limit the spread of terrorist and violent extremist material on their platforms. We do this through information sharing among our members, particularly in the context of live events, to ensure that the distribution and spread of any material related to an attack is either prevented or as limited and contained as possible. We continuously work to refine these processes with the aim of improving our collective response to such tragic incidents when they occur.

To learn more about how GIFCT supports online collaboration in the event of high virality terrorist and violent extremist events in the online environment, you can read about the Content Incident Protocol here. We are also working to refine our protocols with regard to public communication in non-CIP scenarios.