Apparently, only about 200 people initially saw the live video of the New Zealand massacre earlier this month. There was no huge spike, and the video was not viewed by nearly as many, nor was it so widespread, as initially believed.
However, an unnamed hate group apparently then worked hard to make sure that the video was video spread out to a much larger audience in the hours immediately following the tragedy. An unedited version of the tragedy then became available, and literally spread throughout the world.
How widespread did it get? Well, I worked at a high school that say, and just a few hours after the tragedy, some of these kids (and they were black, hardly white supremacists) were watching this unedited video, and talking about how "messed up" it was.
Web sites tried to contain it, and indeed, most versions of the video were quickly deleted. But not all.
That is because it was just about impossible to keep up with how often this video was being released, in some form or another. Officials at Youtube informed the Washington Post that the video was being uploaded once per second.
Also, slightly different, altered versions popped up, to avoid the eye of those who sought to remove the video altogether from the internet. According to the article below by Drew Harwell, there are apparently at least 800 "visually distinct versions" of the video in existence. Obviously, that makes it difficult to get rid of them all.
I am still not entirely certain how they are going to try and prevent something similar from happening again. And let's face it: this is likely to get the attention of copycats, who will likely at least attempt a kind of repeat of this incident.
But someone needs to be held responsible, and try to nip this in the bud before it really spreads like wildfire, right?
The leader of the House Homeland Security Committee, Democratic Representative Bennie Thompson, asked Facebook, Microsoft, YouTube and Twitter for a briefing next week regarding this matter. In a note to those companies’ top executives sent Tuesday, Thompson stressed, “You must do better.” He also threatened that future regulations were not far more likely:
“If you are unwilling to do so, Congress must consider policies to ensure that terrorist content is not distributed on your platforms — including by studying the examples being set by other countries.”
New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said in a speech on Tuesday that social-media giants were responsible and needed to be held accountable for their role in aiding the videos’ rapid spread:
“We cannot simply sit back and accept that these platforms just exist and what is said is not the responsibility of the place where they are published. They are the publisher, not just the postman. There cannot be a case of all profit, no responsibility.”
This is the link to the article that I used in writing this particular blog entry about the internet's role in spreading the video that the mass murderer made last Friday:
Fewer than 200 people watched the New Zealand massacre live. A hateful group helped it reach millions by Drew Harwell March 19, 2019:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/03/19/fewer-than-people-watched-new-zealand-massacre-live-hateful-group-helped-it-reach-millions/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.5cc86b1bf5c1
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