Social media experts are skeptical of President Trump's plan to fight gun violence online

Technology experts are skeptical of President Donald Trump’s call for Internet companies to work with law enforcement and the Justice Department to develop tools to detect mass shootings before they even happen. They say the Trump administration has an especially bad track record on addressing violence on social media -- and has ignored major opportunities to take action on this front both at home and with other countries. Instead, they lament, President Trump's tech policy focus has been heavily centered on accusing Big Tech of anti-conservative bias-- accusations the companies deny and have not been backed by substantial evidence.  While Trump is now promising to "shine a light" on the dark corners of the internet, experts note that the administration did not even sign onto the Christchuch call, a key international agreement to curb violent extremism online after the New Zealand shootings. And violent speech on social media “wasn’t even mentioned” as the White House hosted a high-profile social media summit in July. President Trump's call for social media companies to take a greater role in searching for possible predictors of violent acts could also be difficult to square with his charges that Big Tech is already going overboard in the effort to moderate accounts.