Terrorist livestream hunt still continues
The Government’s extremist-content watchdog continues to hunt down the Christchurch mosque terrorist’s livestream three-years on, as it is shared on Twitter and other platforms.
The Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) yesterday released a ‘‘transparency report’’ that showed its team which monitors and attempts to take down violent extremist content from the Internet had investigated 614 pieces of material online over the course of 2021. The majority of the content, 303 cases, involved ‘‘white identity’’ or white supremacist material.
And most of this content was related to the Christchurch mosque terror attack, with 134 instances involving the livestream of the attack, and 180 investigations into such material resulting in platforms taking it off the Internet.
‘‘Three years since these attacks, the footage from the livestreamed video continues to be shared and promoted, particularly by white-identity motivated extremists,’’ the report said.
Twitter was the platform that hosted most of the content investigated, 98 instances, followed by video hosting site BitChute with 52, and Facebook with 50.
In the case of Twitter, in 41 of the investigations the content was deemed not objectionable, in 32 cases the material was taken down by the platform, and in 13 the material was no longer ‘‘live’’ on the site. The Digital Violent Extremism team also activated an ‘‘online crisis response process’’, which has investigators actively monitoring the Internet for harmful extremist material, four times during the year. The first instance came after the Capitol building in Washington DC, United States, was stormed by protesters who opposed the election of President Joe Biden. As images of violence from the riot were being shared widely online, the team monitored platforms prior to Biden’s inauguration.
Two domestic events were actively monitored: The two-year anniversary of the Christchurch mosque terror attack in March 2021, and the aftermath of the stabbing attack at a New Lynn mall in September 2021.
‘‘Extreme Islamophobic views that could re-traumatise communities also proliferated widely. During this period of increased monitoring, DIA referred links to platforms for breaches of their terms of use so those platforms would remove this content,’’ the report said, of the Christchurch terror attack commemoration.
‘‘A full crisis activation was not required as no highly viral, illegal content was identified.’’