Aust, UK working together on web terror

Australia will work with Britain on tackling online terrorism, as major UK internet companies agreed to beef up filters to stop people viewing extremist material online.

Canberra and Downing Street say they'll develop a common approach to dealing with the threat of online terrorism and its radicalising messages.

A team of Australian experts will visit the UK by the end of the year to see the work of Britain's Counter Terrorism Internet Referral Unit and the co-operation being developed with internet providers.

The referral unit has removed more than 55,000 pieces of online content, including 34,000 pieces in the last year.

Part of the UK's metropolitan police, it is the only unit of its kind in the world dedicated to monitoring social media sites, terrorist media organisations and other online outlets.

As British Prime Minister David Cameron delivered a speech to parliament in Canberra, where he touched on issues of online extremism, Downing Street said the major internet providers had agreed to new measures.

The four main internet providers in the UK - BT, Virgin, Sky and TalkTalk - will put in place the more stringent filters on terrorism-related content.

They will also host buttons for the public to report extremist material, similar to those used to report child sexual exploitation on the internet.

The UK government says Facebook, Google, Yahoo and Twitter have agreed to support smaller industry players to improve their capacity to deal with extremist material.

Mr Cameron, who is in Australia for the G20 summit, says communications giants must live up to their "social responsibility" to protect society from radicalising videos and messages transmitted over the internet.

"A new and pressing challenge is getting extremist material taken down from the internet," he said in the speech to parliament.

"There is a role for government in that. We must not allow the internet to be an ungoverned space. But there is a role for companies too.

"We are making progress but there is further to go. This is their social responsibility. And we expect them to live up to it."