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RT,
19 March, 2019
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has called for a global crackdown on social media in the aftermath of the Christchurch mosque shootings, one of which was streamed live on Facebook and viewed thousands of times.
“It is unacceptable to treat the internet as an ungoverned space,” Morrison wrote in a letter to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ahead of the upcoming G20 meeting in Osaka, Japan in June.
I've written to Japanese PM @AbeShinzo as G20 President to have the leaders of the world’s biggest economies ensure social media companies implement better safeguards to ensure their platforms can’t be exploited by terrorists or to spread hate speech.
“It is imperative that the global community works together to ensure that technology firms meet their moral obligation to protect the communities which they serve and from which they profit,” Morrison added.
In a report on the incident, Facebook said that less than 200 people actually watched the carnage unfold live, but the archived video of the attack in which 50 people were killed and over 40 injured was then reportedly streamed some 4,000 times before it was eventually taken down. The first user complaint was lodged some 29 minutes after the attack had begun.
The company claims it removed 1.5 million copies of the videos of the attack in the first 24 hours, 1.2 million of which were “blocked at upload.” YouTube was heavily criticized for its perceived failure to adequately quarantine and remove any clones of the mosque attack video.Morrison questioned social media giants’ ability to police their own platforms, especially in light of such graphic and disturbing content being shared so easily across multiple platforms, as a terrorist attack was underway.
“If they can write an algorithm to make sure that the ads they want you to see can appear on your mobile phone, then I’m quite confident they can write an algorithm to screen out hate content on social media platforms,” Morrison told reporters in Adelaide.
However, Morrison has already received criticism, with some dubbing his call to action “collateral censorship” amid fears of overreaction and knee-jerk regulations.
“It is a difficult task to moderate live content,” law professor and algorithm expert Frank Pasquale from the University of Maryland said, as quoted by ABC News.
“It’s not as easy as it’s being made out to be in terms of directly applying advertising algorithms to get rid of forbidden content or horrific content.”
In Facebook’s case, its some two billion users can initiate a livestream at the touch of a button. However, there is currently no known algorithm that governs livestream video the same way as traditional posts. Facebook already employs thousands of content moderators to sift through flagged videos on the platform, many of whom experience PTSD-like symptoms.
READ MORE: Sex, drugs, and flat earth: Facebook’s content-watch contractors cope with the dregs of the internet
Should
we follow the Brits?
'Global
alliance': Jacinda Ardern joins world leaders calling for tech giant
accountability
20
March, 2019
Jacinda
Ardern has joined other world leaders calling for technology giants
such as Facebook and Google to take accountability for the content
they facilitate.
The
Prime Minister was asked on Tuesday if the Government would consider
introducing disincentives for Facebook after it failed to fully
remove footage of the alleged Christchurch terrorist's livestream.
"At
this stage, some of the conversations we've had in Cabinet have been
reasonably general and there's acknowledgement that work needs to be
done and a commitment to continue looking at the legislative
framework that we have in New Zealand," she said.
Questions
have been raised over the accountability of the alleged Christchurch
terrorist, a 28-year-old Australian national, posting a livestream of
the event to Facebook. Ardern said despite it being removed over 1.5
million times within the first 24 hours, the video was still widely
shared.
"We
have been in contact with Facebook. They have given us updates on
their efforts to have it removed, but, as I say, it should not be
distributed, available, able to be viewed. It is horrendous,"
Ardern said.
She
acknowledged that Facebook's chief operating officer, Sheryl
Sandberg, had been in touch. But in her speech to Parliament later
that day, Ardern showed that New Zealand is prepared to stand up to
Facebook and demand change.
"We
cannot simply sit back and accept that these platforms just exist and
that what is said on them is not the responsibility of the place
where they are published. They are the publisher. Not just the
postman," she said..
"There
cannot be a case of all profit, no responsibility... I don't have all
of the answers now, but we must collectively find them."
The
alleged gunman used Facebook to livestream his shooting, which was
then shared via Google-owned YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Reddit.
Australian
Prime Minister Scott Morrison called for a social media crackdown in
the wake of the attacks. He wrote to G20 chairman, Japanese Prime
Minister Shinzo Abe, asking for social media reform to be the top
priority at the next annual meeting.
Telecom
providers in New Zealand have joined the rally. An open letter to
Google, Facebook and Twitter by Spark, Vodafone and 2degrees on
Tuesday called on the social media giants to "urgently discuss"
a solution to videos such as the livestream being shared.
And
in a letter released on Tuesday (US local time), the chair of the US
House Committee on Homeland Security, Representative Bennie Thompson,
wrote to Facebook, Google, Twitter and Microsoft urging them to do a
better job or removing violent political content.
"Your
companies must prioritise responding to these toxic and violent
ideologies with resources and attention," Thomson wrote.
In
a statement to Newshub this week, Google said it had removed "tens
of thousands of videos [and] terminated hundreds of accounts created
to promote or glorify the shooter", adding that the volume of
videos uploaded to YouTube in the 24 hours after the attack was
"unprecedented".
"Our
teams are continuing to work around the clock to prevent violent and
graphic content from spreading, we know there is much more work to
do."
New
Zealand has stood up to Google in the past. Last year the search
giant said it would review its systems after it named the alleged
killer of British backpacker Grace Millane in an email about trending
issues in New Zealand.
Ardern
pointed to the UK as a country that's often stood up to large
technology companies that haven't done enough to protect people's
wellbeing and stop the spread of illicit content such as extremist
propaganda.
"I
discussed that with [British Prime Minister] Theresa May when we
spoke [on Monday]," Ardern said. "We agreed that globally,
efforts need to be made. We really need a global alliance to deal
with some of these issues."
In
the wake of the London Bridge terror attack in June 2017, May called
for new laws to regulate the internet, and demanded that internet
companies like Facebook and Google do more to prevent terrorists from
communicating freely.
"We
cannot allow this ideology the safe space it needs to breed,"
she said at the time. "Yet that is precisely what the internet
and the big companies that provide internet-based services provide."
Facebook
has already come under intense scrutiny in the UK following a series
of data scandals, including that of UK-based consulting firm
Cambridge Analytica, which was sold the personal data of around 50
million Facebook users through an app.
More
recently, UK lawmakers accused Facebook of violating data privacy and
competition laws in a report on social media disinformation.
Documents showed Facebook was "willing to override its users'
privacy settings in order to transfer data" to app developers.
A
collective internet crackdown has been floated in the past. Ardern
joined leaders of Australia, Canada, the US and UK - members of the
Five Eyes group of nations - for a conference in September last year
to discuss "grave threats" online.
One
of the solutions put forward at the conference was to break
end-to-end internet encryption - the technology that translates data
into unreadable code which is only decipherable by the user and those
the user intends to share it with... perfect for terror groups.
The
Prime Minister has yet to disclose what specific action the
Government will take against tech giants, if any, in the wake of the
suspected white supremacist's social media livestream.
Ardern
told Parliament on Tuesday her Government will "look at the role
social media played" and will examine "what steps we can
take", including on the international stage, and in unison with
New Zealand's partners.
"There
is no question that ideas and language of division and hate have
existed for decades, but their form of distribution, the tools of
organisation, they are new."
Newshub
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