Multiple US service members confirmed killed in Syria bombing being claimed by ISIS
An explosion near a U.S.-led coalition patrol in Manbij was reportedly caused by a suicide bomber; Trey Yingst reports on the latest.
The horrifying moment in which a deadly suicide bomb exploded on a street in Syria on Wednesday was captured in a video that ISIS-sympathetic accounts then shared on Facebook.
Two different accounts posted what appears to be the same video showing the bombing in Majib, which reportedly killed 16 people — including a number of U.S. service members.
The videos, which were flagged for Fox News by Eric Feinberg, chief executive of cyberintelligence company GIPEC, had not been taken down more than five hours after being posted, with each racking up over 2,000 views. However, when Fox News checked for the accounts early Thursday morning, both had been suspended from the platform.
Feinberg, who has been tracking this type of content for quite some time, told Fox News that the social network needs to do more to remove terrorist material.
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A screenshot shows an account on Facebook sympathetic to ISIS with a video of the moment before a suicide bomb explodes. (Facebook)
"I am not surprised to see these on Facebook because our systems have been tracking the ISIS peer-to-peer, friend to friend sharing of posts and videos like these for years," Feinberg told Fox News.
Facebook has been battling the spread of terrorist propaganda on its platform for years and the struggle is one that will likely continue — the company says it removed millions of pieces of terrorist content last year thanks to improvements in detection systems. In addition, Facebook has a policy regarding what it calls Dangerous Individuals and Organizations, which includes terrorist groups like ISIS, that prohibits them from having a presence on the platform.
“We remove content that expresses support or praise for organizations or individuals associated with a terrorist organization or any acts committed by them as soon as we become aware of it. In the instances in which the posts sharing the video violate our Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy, it has been removed. We have also deactivated the accounts of several people who shared it in a way that violates this policy,” a Facebook spokesperson told Fox News on Thursday.
Feinberg told Fox News that "if our systems are able to find these posts and videos, then [Facebook] needs to do more."
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A second purported ISIS Facebook account showing a video of the suicide bombing in Syria.
The Menlo Park, Calif. company uses a combination of machine learning and human moderators to track and prevent the spread of this type of terrorist propaganda.
"Our work to combat terrorism is not done," Facebook said. "Terrorists come in many ideological stripes — and the most dangerous among them are deeply resilient."
Fox News reached out to Facebook for comment and will update the story as it develops.
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