Amazon joins EU Internet Forum to fight terrorist material and other online threats

Amazon has signed up to become a member of the European Union Internet Forum (EUIF), a European Commission funded body set up to tackle some of the worst online ills.

The EC established the EUIF in 2015 to fight the spread of terrorist material on the internet. Its remit has since expanded to include other online threats, including the sale of illegal drugs, child sexual abuse material and human trafficking.

Amazon said it was “selected” to join the EUIF due to its efforts to prevent such illegal content being spread through its services.

“By joining the EUIF, we aim to further our understanding of emerging issues, learn from the experiences of other members, and contribute to the development of effective solutions,” Amazon said in a recent blog post.

How Amazon is fighting child sexual abuse

The company said it is “investing in new technologies and tools to improve our ability to prevent, detect, respond to, and remove” material related to child sexual abuse spread through its services. This includes automated detection tools, keyword filtering and machine learning, alongside human moderators.

According to Amazon, in 2023 over 31,000 reports were made to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children following material detected by Amazon and its subsidiaries. Amazon has also signed up to initiatives to prevent the use of generative AI in the creation of material related to child sexual abuse or exploitation.

Elsewhere, Amazon says it is committed to fighting human trafficking, and is hosting a summit on the subject this year.

In February, it paid $1.9 million to over 700 Nepali staff who worked at its warehouses in Saudi Arabia. The workers were told they would be working for Amazon, but were in fact employees of local labour firms who financially exploited them by demanding substantial recruitment and exit fees for their jobs. They also made unfair wage deductions.

Who else is in the EU Internet Forum?

Amazon is joining an already substantial roster of technology giants that have signed up to the EUIF: Google, Meta, Microsoft, TikTok and X, formerly known as Twitter, are all members. They sit alongside EU and European Free Trade countries and European agencies such as Europol.

Among the EUIF’s current priorities are helping moderators identify violent content created by far-right groups, and supporting companies to detect child abuse material in communications using end-to-end encryption.

The last meeting of the EUIF, held in February in Brussels, focused on the challenges to internet safety posed by generative AI. The EUIF said at the time that criminals are using generative AI tools to create sexual abuse images using deepfakes of real children.