The video which was used by the Manchester Arena bomber Salman Abedi to learn how to construct his device is still being shared on YouTube according to evidence given to a United States Senate Committee yesterday.
Sen John Thune, chairman of the commerce committee, said: “According to the Counter Extremism Project, one single bomb making video used to instruct the Manchester suicide bomber has been uploaded to YouTube and removed 11 times but continues to resurface as recently as this month.
“How is it possible for that to happen?” he asked.
The United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Transport and Science heard representatives from Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube answer questions about how they dealt with terrorism.
Juniper Downs, YouTube’s director of public policy and government relations, told the committee that her company has policies that prohibit “the spread of hate and incitement to violence,” and it’s getting better at using machine learning to detect “violent extremist videos.”
When questioned about the specific video, she stated that it removed the video every time, and it’s getting better at wiping re-uploads from its site.
The video features a balaclava-wearing Islamic State group fighter standing in a kitchen and explaining how to build a bomb with easy to obtain ingredients and was allegedly used by Abedi in making the suicide bomb which killed twenty two people as they left the Manchester Arena following an Ariana Grande concert in May last year.
