In order to curb online extremism, after Christchurch massacre in New Zealand, which killed more than 50 people during Friday prayers in last month, the Social media giant, Facebook on Wednesday (May 15) announced to impose strict rules for access to livestreaming to prevent the rampant sharing of graphic video. The move was prompted by the massacre in which white supremacist, broadcasted live footage on Facebook from a head-mounted camera as he gunned down 51 people.
Vice President of integrity Guy Rosen, said in a statement that “Following the horrific recent terrorist attacks in New Zealand, we’ve been reviewing what more we can do to limit our services from being used to cause harm or spread hate”.
A “one-strike” policy at Facebook Live will be applied to a broader range of offenses, with those who violate serious policies suspended from using the feature after a single offense. Such offenses would include sharing a link to a statement from a terrorist group with no context, according to Rosen.
“We plan on extending these restrictions to other areas over the coming weeks, beginning with preventing those same people from creating ads on Facebook,” Rosenadded. “One of the challenges we faced in the days after the attack was a proliferation of many different variants of the video of the attack,” Rosen said. “People — not always intentionally — shared edited versions of the video which made it hard for our systems to detect.”
