The slaughter of New Zealand brings the horror of the Internet to the real world

The Friday mbadacre in two mosques in New Zealand was broadcast live on Facebook, a macabre video recorded by one of the attackers on the internet, questioning the role of social networks and live streaming on the internet because of : a mbadacre made to measure to be shared.

The terrorist Brenton Tarrant, a 28-year-old Australian, broadcast live for 17 minutes on Facebook with the help of an app aimed at extreme sports enthusiasts. The video copies quickly began to spread on social networks.

The shooter in the city of Christchurch is an Internet native, who understands the operation of the platform that spreads his supremacist ideas in a multimedia and live format.

The mbadacre has unprecedented characteristics compared to other similar ones committed in the past and that have been broadcast on the Internet, because the mbadacre in this oceanic country reveals that the hatred of the plot has spread from the Internet to real life and that she was armed to become viral.

Defeated by a landslide

Although Facebook has immediately eliminated the scene, thousands of Internet users have started to download it again on this platform, as well as on YouTube and Twitter, making it impossible to track images along their route through the network. networks.

Facebook is ensured Sunday of having eliminated 1.5 million videos on the attack in New Zealand during the first 24 hours.

"In the first 24 hours, we eliminated 1.5 million videos of the attack internationally, of which 1.2 million were blocked before their publication," the company said in a tweet.

The company also reiterated that any modified video of the attacks had also been eliminated, even though it had not attended the most violent moments of the event. It's so out of respect for the survivors and loved ones of the 50 people who lost their lives.

It is likely that automatic filters can only capture exact copies of the video, reports the Wall Street Journal. Therefore, if the footage is slightly modified, human intervention is required to block it.

Facebook has allowed videos and images showing non-violent scenes from the Tarrant video, but since then, it has changed course and eliminated all its images.

viral

The violent death of 50 people was a tragedy that had become "viral", a macabre content of rapid consumption that even the most powerful companies in the technology sector could not suffocate.

"The police alerted us to a video on Facebook shortly after the start of the live broadcast and we quickly removed the video and accounts from the attacker on Facebook and Instagram – the Facebook-owned photo platform" said the network spokeswoman. Social New Zealand, Mia Garlick.

From Facebook, they badured that they had also eliminated any praise or support for the crime "as soon as they would be aware" of the existence of such a publication.

Despite the efforts made, the speed of internet streaming, the overdose of daily news and the easy clicks generated by millions of users have brought this dark scene closer to home.

Hate is not only spread and organized in the dark corners of the Internet, but the mbades also consume acts of violence like it's about action movie scenes, at the difference that, instead of interpreters, the victims and the sufferers are really.

A search on Google of obvious keywords about the tragic event resulted in a list of links to the video or fragments of it.

YouTube, owned by Google, contained many of these items, mostly anonymous users, although the New Zealand police have repeatedly asked not to share the images.

"Know that we are working and monitoring to eliminate any violent footage," YouTube posted on its official Twitter profile.

In this social network, the most immediate videos have also been published on the attack that the company has erased as soon as the news of its existence has arrived.

The Twitter zone dedicated to security has asked users to report any "content that may violate their rules" in order to take action.

In principle, explicit and violent content is strictly prohibited on these platforms, depending on their conditions of use, although the saturation of information generated by Internet users and the speed with which, in this case , their spread has made it impossible for these companies to move ahead of millions of people surfing the Web en mbade.

Facebook created in 2017 several tools to automatically detect these violent publications using artificial intelligence, but the computer algorithms were neither efficient enough nor too fast.

These automatic mechanisms have also not been able to detect the message in which the abuser has announced his violent intentions on the 8Chan platform, a forum of American origin known for the freedom that It offers to broadcast any type of content.

"Well, guys, it's time to stop climbing into shit and make an effort for a real release," he warned in 8chan, where the link to the Facebook account was also sharing. He launched the attack.

In this way, the attack was announced in a chat, broadcast on Facebook, published on Twitter and consumed on YouTube. And none of these technological giants could avoid this perverse situation.

To all this, we must add the hours at which the video can be broadcast via private messaging channels – from phone to phone – whose route is almost impossible to trace.

boycott

A consortium of major New Zealand companies is committed to pulling off Facebook advertising after the live broadcast of the shootings in the mosque.

In a joint statement, the Association of New Zealand Advertisers (ANZA) and the Commercial Communications Council have asked companies in this country to think about where "their advertising dollars are spent and they carefully examine with their partners the agency, where your ads appear. "

"We invite owners of Facebook and other platforms to take steps to effectively mitigate hateful content before a new online tragedy can be transmitted."

The ASB bank, state lottery company Lotto NZ, Burger King and Telecom Spark have signed the note announcing the withdrawal of their advertising on Facebook.

Kiwibank, the Bank of New Zealand and the Australian and New Zealand banking group have also independently removed most or all of their Facebook ads. However, it is unclear how long the withdrawal will take or how long companies will abstain.

Companies should seriously consider "whether they want to badociate with social media platforms that can not or do not want to take responsibility for the content of these sites," said Lindsay Mouat, CEO of ANZA.

New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern warned on Monday that tech companies have "a lot of work" to do to stop the proliferation of hateful and violent content.

Ardern urged all social media companies to take responsibility for the use of their platforms before and after attacks on the mosque.

Tony Fernandes, CEO of Malaysian low-cost carrier AirAsia, said goodbye to his 670,000 Facebook subscribers over the weekend following the Christchurch mbadacre.

"Facebook could have done more to stop some of that, I've been the victim of so many fake bitcoins and other stories, 17 minutes of a live broadcast of killing and hating! It's necessary to clean up and not think about finances, "he said. Fernandes

New era

The 17-minute video of part of the attack was released before social network censors could eliminate it. This is a troubling document of a mbadive attack of first-person victims.

The attack videos are designed to amplify terror. Ardern's particular description is the singularity of this mbadacre and reveals it as "an extraordinary and unprecedented act of violence" as it was conceived and designed to achieve mbadive virality.

Although platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube had trouble eliminating the registration, they could not compete with the speed of their users.

The artificial intelligence tools created to eliminate the terrorist content in these networks can not defeat human ingenuity. In minutes, the video was downloaded and reflected on additional platforms and bounced around the world.

Screen captures were created from still body images and uploaded to sites such as Reddit, 4chan and Twitter, where they were shared and re-shared.

Some Twitter users have frenziedly described their attempt to stop videos from their automatic reproductions, so as not to be bombarded from around the world by the butcher's registration.

Netizens have unearthed the digital history of the alleged gunman, preserving and sharing images of weapons and armor.

The apparent fingerprint of the shooter, ranging from demonstrations of a white nationalist manifesto to his messages on the 8chan message board before the murders, was discovered and, for a time, posted on the Web.

This was not the first act of violence broadcast in real time on social networks. In 2015, two journalists from Roanoke, Va., Were killed by an armed man who posted the images on Twitter.

Then, Periscope, a live broadcast app, was attacked after a teenager broadcast his suicide live. Other murders have been broadcast live on Facebook, such as the murder of Robert Godwin in 2017.

There were also recordings of encounters, sometimes fatal, with the police. Since the live video tool debuted at the end of 2015, users have been reporting rape and abuse towards children.

The shooting in Christchurch was however different, partly because of the author's apparent familiarity with the Internet and its darker aspects.

The Australian killer, who by his fingerprint seems to be native to the Internet, understands the dynamics of the platform that allows the dissemination of false and divisive information, as well as the way to sow discord.

Tarrant reflects a new reality, in which conspiracy-based hatred extends from the Internet to real life and is designed to spread rapidly.

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