Christchurch attack viral video was the ‘most harmful media event’ of all time, NZ Chief Censor says
Six months after live-stream footage of the Christchurch mosque shootings went viral, Facebook has announced new tactics to tackle extremists.
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Six months after live-streaming footage of the Christchurch massacre went viral, New Zealand’s Chief Censor has revealed he considers the attack “the most harmful media event ever inflicted on the people of one nation”.
While more countries are expected to sign the “Christchurch Call” to take action against online terrorism, David Shanks said more work was needed to prevent online extremism from spreading on social networks and being seen by so many.
His call came as Facebook revealed the devastating attack showed its technology had not been ready to block some extreme violence, forcing it to make changes.
In an extension of a US program, the tech giant today announced it will recommend users who search for white extremist terminology visit EXIT Australia to help them leave hate groups.
Facebook said it would also continue to train its software to detect terrorist videos on its platform, admitting it was not prepared to identify the kind of footage streamed from New Zealand on March 15.
“The video of the attack in Christchurch did not prompt our automatic detection systems because we did not have enough content depicting first-person footage of violent events to effectively train our machine-learning technology,” the company said in a statement.
“We aim to improve our detection of real-world, first-person footage of violent events.”
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Read David Shanks’ personal account of the Christchurch massacre
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Mr Shanks, who attended Australia’s eSafety conference in Sydney, told News Corp Australia he was personally shaken by footage of the shootings at Al Noor Mosque that was live-streamed to Facebook and quickly spread to other social networks.
But he said he was even more alarmed that the horrifying scenes had been watched by “hundreds of thousands of people,” including families of the victims and young people who did not grasp what they were viewing.
“What made it all much, much worse was I knew this had gone viral, that it had been amplified across multiple large internet platforms all around the world,” he said.
“Christchurch schoolchildren saw it on their phones while they lay on the floor of their classroom in lockdown, as they tried to make sense of what was going on.”
Mr Shanks said outlawing the video and the alleged shooter’s manifesto in New Zealand was “a start” but governments and tech giants needed to collaborate to detect similar attacks and prevent their online spread in future.