The half a trillion dollar search engine Google is "re-directing" people to a more correct path, so to speak.
Jigsaw, a subsidiary of the Internet giant's holding company Alphabet, is trying to deter potential ISIS recruits with the program "Redirect Method" that has been in the making for a year now.
The program aims to dissuade potential extremists from joining ISIS with videos catered specifically to those who have shown an interest in extremist material by using a combination of Google's search advertising algorithms and YouTube's video platform.
"The Redirect Method is at its heart a targeted advertising campaign: Let’s take these individuals who are vulnerable to ISIS’ recruitment messaging and instead show them information that refutes it," said Yasmin Green, Jigsaw's head of research and development, according to Wired .
Researchers behind the project chose more than 1,700 keywords that would display the ads that led to the anti-ISIS playlists.
"This came out of an observation that there’s a lot of online demand for ISIS material, but there are also a lot of credible organic voices online debunking their narratives," Green added.
The program is set to venture into a new phase this month, which ultimately advertises certain content to people who have searched for certain keywords or phrases that Jigsaw believes potential extremists look for.
Instead of creating anti-ISIS messages from scratch, the program curates those messages from videos already on YouTube.
The advertisements displayed would be directed to Arabic and English YouTube channels that Jigsaw "believes can undo ISIS's brainwashing."
One such video that Jigsaw believes could dissuade extremists from joining ISIS is the one below of an old woman who speaks out against ISIS members by using verses from the Quran to do so:
“The branding philosophy for the entire pilot project was not to appear judgmental or be moralistic, but really to pique interest of individuals who have questions, questions that are being raised and answered by the Islamic State,” Green said, according to The Intercept .
In a study run by Jigsaw over the course of two months, more than 300,000 people revealed interest in anti-ISIS YouTube channels.
Other actors that have spearheaded anti-extremism online campaigns are Facebook and Twitter, both of which are purging extremist users. In February, Twitter announced that it had banned 125,000 ISIS accounts since mid-2015, according to The Verge .