Some of the biggest tech companies in the world today have come together to fight terrorist contents online. YouTube, Twitter, Microsoft, and Facebook have agreed to monitor and remove contents related to extremism through a database of hashes.

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Hashes serve as a unique code or digital fingerprints that automatically tags a video, photo or any post that a computer has to identify.

For example, if YouTube spots a video featuring terrorists beheading a person, the website will immediately give it a hash before uploading the material to its database. The contents will also be relayed to police authorities and other concerned firms. On the other hand, users can make an appeal if their posts are mistakenly flagged as promoting extremism.

The powerful social media platforms chose to unite with one goal after several meetings with the European Union (EU) officials. Authorities from the region have been eyeing tech giants to help curb the propaganda initiated and dispersed by extremist groups.

Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova of the EU said that tech companies have failed to act against racist and hateful contents. In response to that, Brussels is set to create a law that would throw swift actions against tech firms that fail to respond to extremist posts immediately.

Meanwhile, a Twitter spokesman has said: "there is no place for content that promotes terrorism on our hosted consumer services." Recently, Twitter had to close thousands of user accounts linked with ISIS and other terrorists.

Meanwhile, Microsoft conducts auto-purging of terrorist-related contents on its Xbox Live, Outlook Docs and other platforms. Similarly, Facebook and YouTube have been removing extremist videos and images with the use of automated systems.

Sally Aldous from Facebook has said that the company is really "going after the most obvious serious content that is shared online. That is, the kind of recruitment videos and beheading videos more likely to be against all our content policies."

The four tech giants would reportedly start sharing hashes to fight online terrorist contents in 2017.