Internet’s dark corners spawn hate
Friday’s slaughter, like mass shootings before it, had its seeds in one of the darkest corners of the internet, a chat room where anonymous people appeared to talk openly about the attack before, during and after it happened. But technology played a more visible — and arguably more troubling — role in publicizing the violence itself and, by extension, the hate-filled ideology behind it.
And yet again, the biggest players in America’s rich, massive and sophisticated technology industry — YouTube, Twitter and Facebook — failed to rapidly quell this spread as it metastasized across platforms, bringing horrific images to internet users in a worldwide, dystopian video loop.
More than eight hours after the shooting at one of the mosques was live-streamed on Facebook, the video was still getting uploaded and re-uploaded continuously by other people onto YouTube. A simple search of obvious keywords for the event, such as “New Zealand,” surfaced a long list of videos, many of which were uncensored and extended cuts of the massacre.
The world’s biggest video site, which for years has automatically flagged nudity, copyrighted music and other types of questionable content, has repeatedly struggled to combat violent content.
The incident and its almost instantaneous spread online also underscored how deeply entwined social media platforms have become, with savvy users moving content back and forth across platforms faster than the platforms themselves can react.
The New Zealand massacre video was announced on the fringe chat room 8chan, live-streamed on Facebook, reposted on Twitter and YouTube and discussed on Reddit. Users on 8chan — known for its politically extreme and often-hateful commentary — watched in real time, cheering or expressing horror.
They traded links to the alleged shooter’s hate-filled postings and to mirrors of his videos, while encouraging each other to download copies before they were taken off line.
“(8chan) became the new digital home for some of the most offensive people on the internet, people who really believe in white supremacy and the inferiority of women,” Ethan Chiel wrote for Splinter News in 2016. 8chan was delisted from Google’s search results the previous year because users were posting child porn.
Friday’s massacre is the third time Facebook has been used to broadcast video of a murder.
In 2015, a gunman uploaded smartphone video of him shooting two television journalists from a station in Roanoke, Va.
In 2017, a gunman posted video of his fatal shooting of a bystander in Cleveland, then went on Facebook Live to talk about the killing.