"It's very difficult to control life" | Natalia Zuazo, …

Benton Tarrant, author of the mbadacre at two mosques in New Zealand, broadcast live, via Facebook, the 17 minutes of his attack on the Al Noor mosque. Although the social network is working more effectively to remove the violent content from its platform, the day of the mbadacre was the local police who had to warn Facebook to remove Tarrant's video. "The police alerted us to a video on Facebook shortly after the start of the live broadcast and quickly removed the video and accounts from the abuser on Facebook and Instagram – the Facebook-owned photography platform – ", said the spokesman of the agency. social network in New Zealand, Mia Garlick. But when Facebook downloaded the video, millions of people had already tagged it on YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter.

During a conversation with PáginaI12, Natalia Zuazo, director of Salto Agencia and author of the book The Possess of Internet, warned about the difficulty of evaluating the content circulating on social networks during their broadcast in direct and explaining the mechanism used by Facebook to control what is broadcast on the network.

On the one hand, he explained, the platform uses artificial intelligence, such as robots, to automatically suppress violent information. "This tool is effective in 70% of cases," said Zuazo. But, he adds, Facebook outsources the "moderation" part and recruits in each country the staff responsible for removing content contrary to the laws regarding the use of Facebook. "These people do inhuman work, are exposed to content that should then be eliminated and the rules imposed by the social network," said the political scientist.

For Zuazo, last Friday's mosque mbadacre is linked to the growth of Instagram and Facebook, streaming content and the inability to detect minute-by-minute videos. "Facebook is more and more an audiovisual platform, a broadcaster." Previously, its content was reduced more than anything to photos and this content was easier to filter, but today, Facebook is above all a platform for video and streaming, and it's hard to detect them when they're aired, "says the social networking specialist. On the day of the mbadacre, neither the automatic mechanisms nor the human team were able to download the Tarrant video in time, as neither the 8Chan platform detected the previous messages that the author had left on his network. "Well, guys, it's time to stop climbing into shit and make an effort for a publication in real life," warned Tarrant at age 8, a forum of known American origin for the freedom that he offers to broadcast all kinds of content Again, the attacker shared the link to the Facebook account from which he launched the attack. The attack was announced in a chat, it was relayed on Facebook, it was posted on Twitter and consumed on YouTube. The social network created by Mark Zukerberg immediately deleted the content, as well as Twitter and Reddit. YouTube, for its part, waited several hours to emulate the decision of Facebook. The video platform, owned by Google, quickly hosted several audiovisual elements of the mbadacre, mainly downloaded by anonymous users. "Know that we are working and making sure to eliminate any violent footage," tweeted YouTube on his official profile, just hours after the attack. On Facebook, they also claimed that they were striving to eliminate any praise or support for the crime "as soon as they would be aware" of the existence of a such publication.

Is the dissemination of aggressive content on social networks unmanageable? "In principle, it's very difficult for Facebook and Instagram and if we talk about WhatsApp, we are entering another area because it's a private social network," Zuazo replies. "There is still some progress to be made to control the published content, but the problem is that we run the risk that the cure is worse than the disease, and that's why these events show us the tension, not yet between the right to information and prior censorship. "

Report: Sofia Solari.