On YouTube, the spiritual home of rubbernecking, it was given the play-by-play analysis that the website's recommendation algorithms so often rewards.įinally, Facebook's live streaming tool was primed to give an alleged terrorist the biggest platform in the world - with more than 2 billion users each month, there is none bigger.
On message board sites like Reddit and 8chan, the Christchurch video was welcomed and amplified by communities where hate speech is normalised. Think about the design choices that perpetuated the Christchurch video: On Twitter, the alleged perpetrator used even the banal feature of "pinned tweet" to send users straight to his material. The company's former chief information security officer Alex Stamos pointed out on Twitter that searches for the video spiked as "millions of people are being told online and on TV that there is a video and a document that are too dangerous for them to see".Ĭlearly, there is a tension between what people want to view, the media that draws their attention to it and the social platforms' ability and willingness to stop them. Yet untold numbers of people made their own choices: to seek out the footage, to download it, to share it in ways intended to circumvent Facebook and YouTube's censors.Īccording to Facebook, it removed 1.5 million videos of the attack globally during the first 24 hours. In the days since, companies like Facebook have been called to account by politicians for their role in spreading a live stream video showing the attack.
Free, simple tools allow anyone to upload it.Īs we saw on Friday during the Christchurch mosque shootings, these same tools can also be exploited by an alleged terrorist to send propaganda around the world before police even made an arrest. There is a unique misery to being on social media during a breaking news event.Īutoplay video and trending hashtags can make anyone an unwilling witness to violent material.
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