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New Jersey Attorney General also investigating Discord and Twitch after Buffalo shooting
Following New York's lead, New Jersey’s Acting Attorney General has launched a probe into Twitch and Discord's role in the events of May 14.
Germany synagogue shooter livestreamed attack on Twitch (updated)
Unfortunately, mass shooters are still livestreaming their attacks. Twitch has confirmed to CNBC that the shooter who attacked a synagogue in Halle, Germany was broadcasting the murders on its service. The company has pulled the 35-minute clip and reiterated its "zero-tolerance" policies against hate and violence, adding that it would ban anyone trying to repost the material.
Facebook will train its content-removal AI with police camera footage
Facebook will use footage from police body cameras to train its automatic detection systems to spot and remove footage of mass shootings. The company announced Tuesday that it will partner with law enforcement in the US and UK to obtain footage from their firearms training programs. Data from those videos should help Facebook's systems detect real-world, first-person footage of violent events.
Australia orders ISPs to block sites hosting Christchurch shooting video
Australia isn't waiting for new laws to block access to sites with content it deems horrific. The government's e-safety commissioner Julie Inman has ordered internet service providers in the country to block eight websites hosting the Christchurch terrorist's video, preventing Australians from visiting the sites unless they use alternatives like VPNs. The move comes after Prime Minister Scott Morrison (above) told both Inman and ISPs to create a protocol for ordering these blocks. The commissioner's office will also be responsible for keeping watch over the sites and will unblock them if they pull the video.
Walmart pulls displays for violent media after El Paso shooting
Some politicians are rushing to blame violent video games for mass shootings, and Walmart is apparently quick to respond to this fear. Leaked internal memos revealed that the retailer (which served as the venue for the El Paso shooting) is rushing to pull all store displays that include "violent images or aggressive behavior." This includes demos and events for some console games, movies playing in the electronics section and hunting season videos. It's particularly concerned about anything depicting "combat or third-person shooter" games.
White House invites tech companies to discuss violent online extremism
The White House plans to host a meeting with tech companies to discuss the rise of violent online extremism. According to The Washington Post, this is the Trump administration's first major engagement on the issue after the recent mass shooting in Texas left 22 people dead. Trump is scheduled to be at fundraisers in the Hamptons, so he may not attend.
House committee asks 8chan owner to testify over extremist content
Politicians are still determined to investigate 8chan's role in fueling extremism even though the site is effectively out of commission. The House's Homeland Security Chairman Bennie Thompson and Ranking Member Mike Rogers have sent a letter to 8chan owner Jim Watkins asking him to testify about the site's efforts to "investigate and mitigate" the appearance of extremist content, including white supremacist material. The politicians were concerned that 8chan has been linked to three mass shootings in 2019 (Christchurch, Poway and El Paso), with the attackers reportedly posting letters or manifestos on the site shortly before committing the murders.
The internet is racing to cut ties with 8chan after another deadly shooting
Less than an hour before this weekend's deadly mass-shooting in El Paso, Texas, the suspect appears to have posted a rambling post filled with white nationalist and racist statements on 8chan. After a day of waffling, Cloudflare announced it would cut the security services it had provided the far-right site. That exposed 8chan to distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, and for a time, the site was down. But 8chan soon found a way back online. Now, internet infrastructure companies are playing whack-a-mole, pulling the plug as other services step in to help 8chan get back online.
PewDiePie asks for end to 'subscribe' meme after synagogue shooting
PewDiePie (aka Felix Kjellberg) has largely left himself out of commentary on the effects of the "subscribe to PewDiePie" meme that has been circulating for months, but he's now weighing in. The YouTube star has posted a video calling on viewers to end the meme roughly a day after a shooter at a California synagogue referenced it in his screed. While he had already used Twitter to condemn the Christchurch, New Zealand mass shooter's reference in March, he realized the meme "should have ended then" and that more was necessary.
Christchurch shooting videos are still on Facebook over a month later
Current methods for filtering out terrorist content are still quite limited, and a recent discovery makes that all too clear. Motherboard and the Global Intellectual Property Enforcement Center's Eric Feinberg have discovered that variants of the Christchurch mass shooter's video were available on Facebook 36 days after the incident despite Facebook's efforts to wipe them from the social network. Some of them were trimmed to roughly a minute, but they were all open to the public -- you just had to click a "violent or graphic content" confirmation to see them. Others appeared to dodge filtering attempts by using screen captures instead of the raw video.
Australian bill could imprison social network execs over violent content
Australia may take a stricter approach to violent online material than Europe in light of the mass shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand. The government is introducing legislation that would punish social networks that don't "expeditiously" remove "abhorrent" violent content produced by perpetrators, such as terrorism, kidnapping and rape. If found guilty, a company could not only face fines up to 10 percent of their annual turnover, but see its executives imprisoned for up to three years. The country's Safety Commissioner would have the power to issue formal notices, giving companies a deadline to remove offending material.
House chair asks tech CEOs to speak about New Zealand shooting response (updated)
Internet companies say they've been scrambling to remove video of the mass shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand, but US politicians are concerned they haven't been doing enough. The Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, Bennie Thompson, has sent letters to the CEOs of Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube asking them to brief the committee on their responses to the video on March 27th. Thompson was concerned the footage was still "widely available" on the internet giants' platforms, and that they "must do better."
YouTube bans secondary Alex Jones channel hosting NZ conspiracy videos
YouTube has terminated a channel Alex Jones was reportedly using to skirt his ban from the platform. On a video posted on Resistance News, which was a secondary Infowars channel according to Media Matters, Jones described last week's New Zealand mosque shootings as a "false flag" operation and attacked Muslims.
Facebook says only 4,000 users viewed original NZ shooter livestream
Facebook says a total of 4,000 people viewed the New Zealand mosque shooter's livestream before it was taken down. Less than 200 people were watching during the assailant's live broadcast, according to the social network, none of who reported it. Facebook says the first user report came in 29 minutes after the 17-minute live video started, which was 12 minutes after the livestream ended. The stats form part of Facebook's latest update detailing its ongoing response to the sharing of NZ shooting posts. They reveal the small scale reach of the original broadcast but, as we know, that ultimately didn't stop it from being widely circulated around the web.
New Zealand ISPs block websites hosting Christchurch shooting video
Internet providers in New Zealand aren't relying solely on companies like Facebook and YouTube to get rid of the Christchurch mass shooter's video. Major ISPs in the country, including Vodafone, Spark and Vocus, are working together to block access at the DNS level to websites that don't quickly respond to video takedown requests. The move quickly cut off access to multiple sites, including 4chan, 8chan (where the shooter was a member), LiveLeak and file transfer site Mega. The block goes away the moment a site complies, and Vodafone told Bleeping Computer that a "number of sites" were unblocked that way.
A New Zealand shooting video hit YouTube every second this weekend
In the 24 hours after the mass shooting in New Zealand on Friday, YouTube raced to remove videos that were uploaded as fast as one per second, reports The Washington Post. While the company will not say how many videos it removed, it joined Facebook, Twitter and Reddit in a desperate attempt to remove graphic footage from the shooter's head-mounted camera.
Facebook pulled over 1.5 million videos of New Zealand shooting
Internet giants have been racing to pull copies of the New Zealand mass shooter's video from their sites, and Facebook is illustrating just how difficult that task has been. Facebook New Zealand's Mia Garlick has revealed that the social network removed 1.5 million attack videos worldwide in the first 24 hours, 1.2 million of which were stopped at the upload stage. This includes versions edited to remove the graphic footage of the shootings, Garlick said, as the company wants to both respect people affected by the murders and the "concerns of local authorities."
Facebook and YouTube rush to remove New Zealand shooting footage
Facebook and YouTube are working to remove "violent footage" of the New Zealand mass shootings. The gunman -- who killed 49 people and injured 20 in shootings at two mosques in the city of Christchurch -- appeared to livestream his attack to Facebook using a head-mounted GoPro camera. New Zealand Police said they were moving to have the "extremely distressing footage" removed.
