Silicon Valley Faces Calls to Help Fight Online Extremism

— -- Silicon Valley is facing renewed calls to help combat ISIS on the Internet, while also grappling with the concern of balancing both the liberty and security of users.

The Republican and Democratic presidential front-runners have both expressed a need to enlist Silicon Valley to help root out terrorist material online.

Donald Trump's prescription for going after ISIS online is talking to tech titans like Bill Gates and "closing that Internet up in some way." Hillary Clinton has called for "more support from our friends in the technology world" when it comes to "disrupting ISIS."

Jonathan Russell, head of policy at Quilliam, a London based counter-extremism think tank, said he believes "there is an option for engaging with Silicon Valley a bit better."

"The problem is not the Internet, it’s the ideas that the people are spreading and, obviously, we have to stop seeing the Internet as the problem here," told ABC News.

Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google's parent company, Alphabet, said one possible way Silicon Valley can help is to create "tools to help de-escalate tensions on social media — sort of like spell-checkers, but for hate and harassment," he wrote in an opinion piece published Monday in the New York Times.

"We should target social accounts for terrorist groups like the Islamic State, and remove videos before they spread, or help those countering terrorist messages to find their voice," he wrote. "Without this type of leadership from government, from citizens, from tech companies, the Internet could become a vehicle for further disaggregation of poorly built societies, and the empowerment of the wrong people, and the wrong voices."

It's a delicate balance for Silicon Valley as tech titans have made it clear user privacy is of paramount interest. Apple's Tim Cook has previously spoken about "the idea that our consumers should have to make trade-offs between privacy and security."

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg wrote last year "as the world becomes more complex and governments everywhere struggle, trust in the Internet is more important today than ever."

Through Quilliam, Russell said his group has been taking a proactive response to tackling online extremism by building a larger coalition of schools, artists and community leaders who can share their ideas online to counter extremism. One such way has been through creating videos people will want to share online.

"We had a workshop with some girls and they came up with some ideas and have built them into a video called 'Negotiate,'" he said. “The video explores themes young people have to negotiate including, social media, personal appearance, sexuality, faith, family, culture.

"It is the work of young, potentially vulnerable British Muslim girls," Russell said. "That is more powerful than me speaking. It's more real.

"In this case, liberty can provide us security," he added. "We need our human rights to speak freely. These issues are important."