An atrocity designed for social media
The attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand was an act of savagery – proof that the Islamophobic far-right is as malevolent and detestable as the radical Islamists it professes to hate. The murders were also the first true example of a social media massacre. The killer teed up his attack online and broadcast the spree live, in the style of a video game. He name-dropped figures known on the internet to generate confused debate. The manifesto predicts: “The aftershock from my actions will ripple for years to come, driving political and social discourse, creating the atmosphere [for] fear and change.” In other words, he measured the success of his crime by how much attention it got. He wanted its ghastly words and images to be almost unavoidable.
Social-media companies moved fast to take down the recording and manifesto, but they fell short. Questions must be asked about the duties they face as hosts of content, particularly when there were warning signs that the killer was planning something.
He put photographs on Twitter of his guns and body armour – the pictures remained online until his account was suspended following the attack – and advertised his forthcoming live broadcast on the forum known as 8chan. After the massacre, internet users saved copies of the video and disseminated them via Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and Instagram.
The argument goes that it is hard to police live streaming and the companies do hire a lot of human beings to pick through vile content and censor it. But with all the “best practice” policies in the world, the chief problem remains: social media companies are not treated as publishers. If a newspaper published inappropriate images of a terror attack, it would face consequences that could bankrupt it. Social media firms get off lightly.
One cannot stop the technological change in communications, but it comes with ethical responsibility – and if ethics are not exercised then laws have to be written to enforce them. Blame for this horrendous slaughter lies squarely with the killer, obviously. But he was consciously pursuing a strategy of tension, trying to intimidate and terrify society into chaos and overreaction and, in the sense that social media was the medium by which he spread his frightening message, it has become an unwitting tool of extremists. What will the internet entrepreneurs and politicians do about it?