Tech firms were on high alert on Tuesday after a video of another beheading by the Islamic militant group ISIS hit the web, Fox News reported.
Previously, the execution video of journalist James Foley quickly spread across various online social media accounts. Many believed that the original video, which was uploaded on YouTube, was a propaganda tool used by the terrorist group to instill fear among the public.
For the second video, which showed the death of American journalist Steven Sotloff, a Silicon Valley insider said online operators immediately tracked the original file and deleted it.
The source along with officials from the tech companies chose to remain anonymous in order to ensure the effectiveness of their censorship procedures.
The move by tech officials coincides with policies of many social media sites. According to their guidelines, posting threatening and extremely violent content is grounds for account suspension.
In addition to taking down the original source, the tech firms collaborated with various online sites such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to close down accounts which posted links to the video, according to Economic Times.
According to the insider, this is a way for the tech companies to protect the public from the online influence of ISIS. In addition, the firms are trying to completely block out the extremist group from operating in social media sites.
For Dwayne Melancon, the chief technology officer of cyber security firm Tripwire, the censorship methods conducted by tech companies is challenging because it does not only involve tracking down the source.
Aside from deleting the original source, operators also have to deal with stubborn users who are more concerned with spreading copied versions of the video, Seattle Times reported.
"Even in these situations, videos have often already been harvested by users that download them and then repost the material on other sites," Melancon said.
"This is the proverbial 'the cat is out of the bag' problem we see all the time on the Internet," he added. "While you may be able to deal with the original source of content, you're almost always dealing with multiple sources - many of whom will not listen to any request to 'scrub' the video from the sites."
