CHRISTCHURCH (New Zealand), March 19 (NNN-AGENCIES) \u2013 Facebook says it removed a staggering 1.5 million videos showing harrowing viral footage of the Christchurch mosque rampage but criticism of social media giants for failing to block images of the \u201creal-time terror attack\u201d is also spreading fast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As the alleged gunman callously picked off his victims in Christchurch\u2019s Al Noor mosque, he livestreamed the gruesome scene on Facebook Live, apparently using a camera mounted on his body, after also tweeting a racist \u201cmanifesto.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Facebook said it \u201cquickly\u201d removed the video, plus the gunman\u2019s account and Instagram, and in the first 24 hours scrubbed 1.5 million videos worldwide \u201cof which 1.2 million were blocked at upload.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Spokeswoman Mia Garlick from Facebook New Zealand said the firm was \u201cworking around the clock to remove violating content using a combination of technology and people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But despite pleas \u2014 and official orders from authorities \u2014 not to share the content, the footage proliferated widely online and experts said the 17-minute video was easily retrievable several hours after the attack that killed 50 people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to Facebook\u2019s own figures, at least 300,000 videos were not blocked before being uploaded and there is no official data on how many times these were viewed or shared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said authorities did whatever they could to purge the web of the images but laid the responsibility at the door of the Silicon Valley giants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cUltimately it has been up to those platforms to facilitate their removal,\u201d she told reporters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI do think that there are further questions to be answered. Obviously these social media platforms have wide reach. This is a problem that goes well beyond New Zealand.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis is an issue that I will look to be discussing with Facebook,\u201d she warned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This was not the first time Facebook Live has been used to broadcast atrocities \u2014 a murder was livestreamed in the US city of Cleveland in 2017 \u2014 and Facebook and Twitter say they have invested in technology and human resources to combat the problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Facebook has hired about 20,000 moderators but critics say they are not doing enough. — NNN-AGENCIES<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
CHRISTCHURCH (New Zealand), March 19 (NNN-AGENCIES) \u2013 Facebook says it removed a staggering 1.5 million videos showing harrowing viral footage of the Christchurch mosque rampage but criticism of social media giants for failing to block images of the \u201creal-time terror attack\u201d is also spreading fast. As the alleged gunman callously picked off his victims in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[215],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14944"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14944\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}