New York ( US)- Social media platforms have learned to remove violent videos of extremist shootings more quickly over the last few years. It’s just that they’re not moving fast enough.
Police say a white gunman killed ten people and injured three others in a “racially motivated violent extremist” shooting in Buffalo on Saturday. Most of whom were Black, and it live-streamed the attack to Amazon-owned Twitch. According to a Twitch spokesperson, the video got removed in less than two minutes.
That’s much faster than the 17 minutes it took Facebook to remove a similar video streamed by a self-described white supremacist who killed 51 people in two New Zealand mosques in 2019. However, versions of the Buffalo shooting video quickly spread to other platforms and haven’t constantly swiftly vanished.
In April, Twitter implemented a new policy on “perpetrators of violent attacks”. They are removing accounts maintained by “individual perpetrators of terrorist. And violent extremist, mass violent attacks” or tweets and other material produced by such perpetrators. However, on Sunday, video clips are still shared on the platform.
One video purporting to show the gunman moving through a supermarket and firing at people was posted to Twitter at 8:12 a.m. Pacific time and was still viewable more than four hours later.
Twitter said on Sunday that it was working to remove material about the shooting that violated its policies. However, the company added that when people share media to condemn it or provide context, transmitting videos and other material from the shooter may not violate the rules.
In these cases, Twitter says it covers images or videos with a “sensitive material” cover that users must click through to view.
Later that day, however, Twitter reversed its stance on handling material related to the shooting. In a follow-up email, the company stated that it is “removing videos and media related to the incident” and “may remove” tweets disseminating the shooter’s writings. Previously, the company stated that it “may” remove material created by perpetrators.
“We believe the hateful and discriminatory views promoted in perpetrators’ content are harmful to society. Twitter says their dissemination should be limited to prevent perpetrators from publicising their message,”
Following the attack, New York Gov Kathy Hochul said that social media companies must be vigilant at a news conference. They should monitor what happens on their platforms and find it inexcusable the live stream wasn’t taken down “within a second.”
“The CEOs of those companies need to be held accountable and assure all of us that they’re taking every step humanly possible to monitor this information,” Hochul said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” “How these depraved ideas are fermenting on social media – it’s spreading like a virus now.”
Hochul stated that she holds corporations accountable for “fomenting” racist views. “These ideas are being spread. They’re posting videos of previous attacks. And they’re all clones. “They’re all looking for the next great white hope to inspire the next attack,” she said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
According to a law enforcement official, investigators are also looking into a rant the gunman posted online, which purports to outline the attacker’s racist, anti-immigrant, and anti-Semitic beliefs, including a desire to expel all people of European descent from the United States.
According to police, the suspected gunman, Payton Gendron of Conklin, New York, shot 11 Black and two white victims in a Buffalo supermarket, echoing a deadly attack in a German synagogue in October 2019 streamed on Twitch.
Twitch is popular among video game players and has played an essential role in the growth of esports. According to a company spokesperson, the company has a “zero-tolerance policy” for violence. So far, the company has not revealed any information about the user page or the Livestream, including how many people watched it. According to the spokesperson, the company has taken the account offline and is monitoring any others who may rebroadcast the video.
In Europe, a senior European Union official in charge of the bloc’s digital affairs said on Sunday that the live streaming on Twitch demonstrated the need for administrators to continue working with online platforms so that any future broadcasts of killings can be quickly shut down.
However, Margrethe Vestager, the European Commission’s executive vice-president, stated that eliminating such broadcasts would be difficult.
Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, said Sunday that it quickly designated the shooting as a “terrorist attack” on Saturday, which triggered an internal process that identifies the suspect’s account, as well as copies of his writings and any copy of or link to a video of his attack.
The company said it has removed the shooting video from the platform and added that instances of it still being shared are through links to streaming sites. These links, in turn, are blocked and “blackholed” by the company, meaning they can’t be uploaded again.
But, unless the company chooses to block an entire streaming site from its platform, which is unlikely, new links created as people upload copies to outside sites would have to be individually locked in a game of cat and mouse.
According to Jared Holt, a resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, live-content moderation remains a significant challenge for businesses. He mentioned Twitch’s quick response time and how the company was wise to monitor their platform for potential re-uploads.
“Other video hosting platforms should be aware of this content to the extent that it has been recorded – and may also be republished on their products,” Holt said.
