Editor’s Note: This post appeared as an op-ed in the Financial Times earlier today.

Terrorism is an attack on open societies, and addressing the threat posed by violence and hate is a critical challenge for us all. Google and YouTube are committed to being part of the solution. We are working with government, law enforcement and civil society groups to tackle the problem of violent extremism online. There should be no place for terrorist content on our services.

While we and others have worked for years to identify and remove content that violates our policies, the uncomfortable truth is that we, as an industry, must acknowledge that more needs to be done. Now.

We have thousands of people around the world who review and counter abuse of our platforms. Our engineers have developed technology to prevent re-uploads of known terrorist content using image-matching technology. We have invested in systems that use content-based signals to help identify new videos for removal. And we have developed partnerships with expert groups, counter-extremism agencies, and the other technology companies to help inform and strengthen our efforts.

Today, we are pledging to take four additional steps.

First, we are increasing our use of technology to help identify extremist and terrorism-related videos. This can be challenging: a video of a terrorist attack may be informative news reporting if broadcast by the BBC, or glorification of violence if uploaded in a different context by a different user. We have used video analysis models to find and assess more than 50 per cent of the terrorism-related content we have removed over the past six months. We will now devote more engineering resources to apply our most advanced machine learning research to train new “content classifiers” to help us more quickly identify and remove extremist and terrorism-related content.

Second, because technology alone is not a silver bullet, we will greatly increase the number of independent experts in YouTube’s Trusted Flagger programme. Machines can help identify problematic videos, but human experts still play a role in nuanced decisions about the line between violent propaganda and religious or newsworthy speech. While many user flags can be inaccurate, Trusted Flagger reports are accurate over 90 per cent of the time and help us scale our efforts and identify emerging areas of concern. We will expand this programme by adding 50 expert NGOs to the 63 organisations who are already part of the programme, and we will support them with operational grants. This allows us to benefit from the expertise of specialised organisations working on issues like hate speech, self-harm, and terrorism. We will also expand our work with counter-extremist groups to help identify content that may be being used to radicalise and recruit extremists.

Third, we will be taking a tougher stance on videos that do not clearly violate our policies — for example, videos that contain inflammatory religious or supremacist content. In future these will appear behind an interstitial warning and they will not be monetised, recommended or eligible for comments or user endorsements. That means these videos will have less engagement and be harder to find. We think this strikes the right balance between free expression and access to information without promoting extremely offensive viewpoints.

Finally, YouTube will expand its role in counter-radicalisation efforts. Building on our successful Creators for Change programme promoting YouTube voices against hate and radicalisation, we are working with Jigsaw to implement the “Redirect Method” more broadly across Europe. This promising approach harnesses the power of targeted online advertising to reach potential Isis recruits, and redirects them towards anti-terrorist videos that can change their minds about joining. In previous deployments of this system, potential recruits have clicked through on the ads at an unusually high rate, and watched over half a million minutes of video content that debunks terrorist recruiting messages.

We have also recently committed to working with industry colleagues—including Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter—to establish an international forum to share and develop technology and support smaller companies and accelerate our joint efforts to tackle terrorism online.
Collectively, these changes will make a difference. And we’ll keep working on the problem until we get the balance right. Extremists and terrorists seek to attack and erode not just our security, but also our values; the very things that make our societies open and free. We must not let them. Together, we can build lasting solutions that address the threats to our security and our freedoms. It is a sweeping and complex challenge. We are committed to playing our part.

Posted by Kent Walker, General Counsel, Google

Posted by Nabil Naghdy, Product Manager, Google Flights

Ever wondered how you can keep your children safe online? It’s a question more and more parents are asking, as eight out of ten people in New Zealand own a smartphone or tablet, and 88% use social media every month. Today families have another tool to help children to be smart, safe and responsible online with the launch of a new program for Year Eight and Nine students in New Zealand.

The Digital Licence is an interactive online quiz providing cyber safety for kids; educating them on what to do if they are exposed to unwanted, inappropriate and offensive content or cyber bullying; and the consequences of putting their privacy at risk when interacting online.



The Digital Licence was developed by the Alannah & Madeline Foundation, a not-for-profit dedicated to keeping children safe from violence and bullying and Google is proud to help make the program available free of charge to all Year Eight and Nine students.

The licence was launched today with the Alannah & Madeline Foundation at Point England School in Auckland today, a School recognised as a leader in successfully integrating technology into its teaching and learning.



Point England School Principal, Russell Burt said the Digital Licence will be a valuable addition to the skills his students are being taught.

“This is an excellent new tool for NZ teachers and parents to have in the toolkit, to grow Cyber Smart values in that tricky Year 7 to Year 10 age group. Well done to the Alannah & Madeline Foundation and Google for making this available to NZ schools and families.”



We know that the internet is empowering Kiwi students to learn and grow their ambitions. Now, with this program, we can help to make sure that time spent online is positive, constructive and enjoyable.

Find out more about the Digital Licence here.

Posted by Stephanie Davis, Country Director, Google New Zealand

Helping educators to confidently teach digital technologies provides students with lifelong skills that enable them to solve problems and develop critical analysis skills.

Google’s Computer Science for High Schools (CS4HS) program has been running in Australia and New Zealand since 2011 and in that time has trained more than 9,000 teachers.

Through hands-on professional development workshops the program provides teachers with the skills and resources they need to teach computational thinking and computer science concepts in fun and engaging ways.

Ali Duncan, a primary teacher at Ladbrooks School in Christchurch, along with other members of her school’s faculty, attended the first CS4PS (Computer Science for Primary Schools) run by the University of Canterbury in 2016. She says the workshop “made me feel more confident to expand my learning (a tiny bit of Python, robotics, Scratch) and being more open in general to conversations around these areas with my children and colleagues”.

Ladbrooks School students at the BuzzOff Challenge

Since the workshop Ali has become a driving force in her school for computer science and STEM programs. The students “love learning computer science, they enjoy sharing with their parents and making those connections”. Through the CS4PS workshop, Ali’s class was invited to the University of Canterbury’s BuzzOff BeeBot challenge last year which was a fantastic learning experience for the students and showcases the ongoing support for teachers fostered by the CS4HS program.

We’re excited to announce the 2017 CS4HS Awards that will continue to inspire and empower teachers like Bianca around Australia and New Zealand.

2017 CS4HS Funding Recipients 

Auckland University of Technology

NZACDITT

The University of Canterbury - Primary Workshop

The University of Canterbury - Secondary Workshop

Victoria University of Wellington

Posted by Sally-Ann Williams, Engineering Community & Outreach Manager, Google Australia & New Zealand

Zach Maier, Product Manager, Google Maps

As thousands of New Zealand students returned to school this month, here’s a stat that might not surprise some mums and dads out there: New Zealand searches for “backpack” have grown by 21% since this time last year. But it’s not just backpacks, searches for the latest fashion, tech and school supplies are surging. Maybe you are searching online today for the perfect Valentine’s Day gift? More than half (56%) of Kiwis use the Internet to compare products, prices or features to help make purchase decisions.

We know that this type of research can take time, so we want to help streamline the process for Kiwi shoppers. Today we’re rolling out Shopping Ads - image based ads that help shoppers find the products they're searching for and quickly connect with the merchants who sell those products - in New Zealand. You'll now see them alongside your Google Search results.

So if you’re searching for lunch-boxes or laptops, you can find exactly the one you’re looking for — and easily connect with a retailer who sells it.



Retailers, reach people when they want to buy what you sell
If you're a business, you can use Google Shopping campaigns to promote the products you sell, boost traffic to your website or local store, and find better qualified leads by putting product images, price, and business name in front of people searching on Google. Like search ads, you only pay when people click through to your website. Instead of targeting based on keywords, however, these ads are targeted based on the product data you provide. Learn more here.

Whether it’s back to school supplies or maybe you’re looking for a Valentine's Day gift, shopping ads can help you find what you’re looking for every time. Top marks for that!


Posted by Aaron Berger, Product Manager for Google Shopping

There are plenty of things we can all do to be safer and more secure online. Having a strong and unique password on different accounts is a good start - who hasn’t recycled the same combination of your pet’s name and the numbers ‘1-2-3’? We’ve all been guilty of that at one stage or another.

Other measures include exchanging personal information only on encrypted sites, and keeping your software up to date with the latest patches - these tried-and-true tips have never been more important and effective. Take our two-minute Security Checkup to protect your account and adjust your security settings, and learn more about other ways to keep your Google Account secure at privacy.google.com.

But this Safer Internet Day, we wanted to give some insight into how our systems protect you automatically - on Google and beyond. No switches to flip or buttons to click, just the stuff that happens in the background that keeps you protected around the clock while you go about your day.

Outsmarting phishing to protect your Google Account

Spam emails take advantage of your trust in friends and businesses to try and steal your username and password

An email may look like it came from someone trustworthy, but it might be a wolf in sheep’s clothing. This spammy message is trying to phish you—trick you into giving away your personal information—and then give its authors access to your account.

Luckily, we’ve built lots of smart armour into Gmail that helps to block dodgy messages before you ever see them. Our systems anonymously examine thousands of signals on Gmail - where a message originated, to whom it’s addressed, what’s contained in the message, how often the sender has contacted the recipient in the past - to determine which messages are safe, and which ones aren’t. We then filter the vast majority of this nasty stuff out; the average Gmail inbox contains less than 0.1 percent spam.

Even that’s not enough, though, because the bad guys can be pretty clever. For example, a fraudster could steal your username and password because you accidentally shared them on an especially deceptive scam site. But even if attackers have your credentials, our systems are still able to block them and keep your account safe - something we did hundreds of millions of times in 2016. That's because we aren’t just making sure you’ve typed the right password.

We also look for subtler signals to confirm the sign-in is you and not someone else: Are you using the same device that you usually use? Are you in a familiar location, or somewhere far away that you haven’t been to before? Scammers leave behind a trail of clues that help us inspect each log-in attempt and compare it with the picture of a safe log-in that our systems have painted based on billions and billions of other log-ins. If something looks fishy, we’ll require more verifications designed to thwart bad guys, send notifications to your phone, or email you so you can quickly act on anything that looks unfamiliar.

On the web, on Android: we've got you covered

We use similar security tools to help make the web and a huge variety of Android apps and devices safer, too.

For example, have you ever clicked a link and seen a red warning, like this one below?

A Safe Browsing warning: red means stop!

That’s Safe Browsing at work, strongly suggesting you should avoid visiting a site because it probably contains “badness,” like malware or a phishing trap. Similar to the way we crawl the web to deliver search results, Safe Browsing crawls for bad stuff that might be harmful to you or your device. It’s always hard at work: We show tens of millions of Safe Browsing warnings every week on more than 2 billion devices, across a variety of web browsers.

For our Android users, we developed an “app analyzer” that builds on Safe Browsing’s technology to specifically hunt for dangerous Android apps, wherever they may be, and warn you before you install one. If an app doesn’t pass the app analyzer test, it’s not be allowed in Google Play.

Detecting the obvious badness — sites well-known for phishing scams, ransomware that locks your device until you pay a fraudster — is relatively easy. But the stealthier badness is only detectable by measuring billions of signals across sites and apps. If this sounds similar to the way we approach spam protections on Gmail or suspicious logins into Google, that’s because it is! The ability to understand badness on a large scale enables us to find the clues bad guys didn’t even know they were leaving behind.

We have a responsibility to keep you safe on Google, and help make the web more secure as well. We’re constantly improving our automatic protections, but we want to give you the controls to adjust your security settings as well.

Don't forget to take our Security Checkup and learn more about other ways to keep your Google Account secure at privacy.google.com, and happy Safer Internet Day!

Posted by Darren Bilby, Security Engineering Manager - Infrastructure Protection, Google Australia

From Kaitaia to Bluff, thousands of students across New Zealand headed back to school this week. Along with new books and uniforms, many students will be getting new devices and exploring new things online. It’s an exciting time for students, but parents and carers might be looking for some tips on encouraging responsible online behaviours - in and out of the classroom.

Managing privacy and security
The new year and the lead up to Safer Internet Day is a great time to check in with the privacy and security settings on your account (or your child’s). My Account gives you quick access to settings and tools that let you safeguard your data, protect your privacy, and decide how your information can make Google services work better for you. You can update your password, check out your personal information and change your account preferences.

More parental controls
So the kids are home from school and ready to relax… many families are already enjoying the YouTube Kids app, and now you can have more control over what your kids watch in the app. A new parental control feature gives parents the tools to decide what content is right for their family and the option to block videos or channels. Because you’re logged in, the videos and channels you block in YouTube Kids will remain blocked across all your devices. You can also tailor the experience for based on age and set a timer to limit screen time for your kids, so the app alerts when the session is over.



Google in the classroom
Our back-to-school update wouldn’t be complete if we didn’t share some updates about Google for Education tools, which more than 70 million students and teachers around the world use every day. We’ve introduced a new generation of Chromebooks, launching later this year, with new features such as stylus, world facing camera and easy access to Android apps, and our education team is working with schools around New Zealand to support ‘bring-your-own-device’ programs. Google Classroom has been upgraded to make it easier for teachers to give individual attention to students. Stay tuned for more updates on this…

So, a bit of homework (completely optional, of course)! Hope these tips help you and your kids to stay safe and make the most of the web as the school term begins.


Posted by Suan Yeo, Education Evangelist, Google Australia and New Zealand