Can We Block a Shooter’s Viral Aspirations?

Anthony Shugaar's question, "why not treat this stuff the way we treat child pornography?" was not given the kind of answer it deserved. We as a nation decided that child porn was so abhorrent and so harmful that we made it a VERY serious crime. A journalist who, in the course of writing about the topic, published a gallery of pictures would wind up in jail and the publication would be fined 'til it hurt. And almost no one would object in the least. That's why the Times has editors and a legal department. Maybe if the publisher/enabler, and those who "share" these kind of videos were held to account, without concern for shareholder value or Silicon Valley philosophy, they would just have to figure out how to stop doing it. At the same time that would level the playing field a little and give a chance for the printed word (and picture) to compete. Personally I think a longish time lag, to allow some real oversight, would add to the quality of the content immeasurably. I'm pretty sure everyone would get used to it! The Times own comments sections are a great example. Sometimes it takes a while for my comments to clear, one or two never did, but the system consistently produces a decent and occasionally interesting addition to the work of the newspaper.

We have the First Amendment. Would-be censors can just shut up.

Re: “Last week, public schools in Charlottesville, Va., were shut down for two days after threats of an “ethnic cleansing” massacre were posted to 4chan and 8chan.” Wow, it is really great that they caught that, even if it was just a threat.

It seems our fondness for consuming all things viral has caused a case of collective dysentery, with the sewers overflowing with frictionless diarrhea.

no one in their right mind would be influenced by the video - the terrorist was a deluded nut case. If anything it would probably instil compassion and empathy for the victims and result in donations for the victims families and a rush of people wanting to give blood donations to help their fellow citizens.

This is where artificial intelligence has its limits as it has no moral compass. AI if over valued and over estimated. I don't even own a cell phone as I've seen as it stops people from seeing the 'reality' around them and what's happening in the real world. Normal people will not be influenced by the video and the only people who would use it are people who were into hate crimes or violent actions before the video was shown. You need laws to control human nature, not AI, and it's the government that makes the nations laws. The internet was invented for speed not security and as no one owns the internet it's up to each nations government to block IP addresses and make laws to govern Artificial Intelligence that is just a stupid computer and is only as intelligent as the person who programmed it.

There were a wide variety of people seeking out the video for varied and different reasons, some because they didn't know what was happening and wanted to get some 'facts' what with fake reports everywhere; if you can't trust your government to protect you and you know the nation you're in isn't geared up to deal with terrorism, or the police armed and ready for terrorist attacks, you're going to get your information off the internet. I read that some muslims didn't know what was going on in Christchurch either, and looked at the video to find out if their family members were one of the victims. There was so much confusion after the attack, and no one knew who was in hospital and who wasn't so you can understand the desperation some people had to learn what happened and was still happening. The government wasn't geared up to deal with this type of horrific event and there were conflicting reports in the media so people in their desperation seek out 'facts' on the internet. It's still on the internet as some Hawkes Bay school teacher said over 50% of her pupils viewed the video and some were still seeking it out. None of these kids are criminals and are just curious to get the facts when you get conflicting reports in the media.

I don’t quite understand what the rush is to post media, though of course I do recall Paul Virilio’s old “Speed and Politics.” After all, cheering for pure velocity is a hallmark of fascist systems. But I really don’t get what would be so bad about having an AI pull suspect videos for human review. Quite possibly it’s what already happens, and I’m just unaware of it.

It's called 'ARTIFICAL Intelligence' for a reason and that's because it is not human and is artificial in every sense of the word. Computers are also 'tools' in every sense of the word, as well.

I think in the next ten years deaths from guns and fanatic cult members will be way down the list of things we need to worry about. People are rejecting democracy in the midst of the time when we need to act vigorously and immediately to stem global warming. In ten years this will be clear. In 20 years the deaths from natural disasters will dwarf the numbers of deaths from wars and all other human madness. If the bulk of people are so dumb that they fall for the crazy stuff that cults tell them then maybe humans should feel the affects of that gullibility. Humans see themselves as special in the universe because god. Well, god does not exist and no human is special. The extinction of humans will simply be the dumbest thing in history since we will do it to ourselves even as we have the technology to not do it. We have a world filled with cult members who have no connection to reality and we are essentially at their mercy because they get to control democracy. I for one am perfectly happy in allowing the suffering that the cult members seem to crave.

The problem with our modern interpretation of the idea of free speech is that a large section of the public thinks "free speech" means society owes them a public forum. They believe that they're entitled to a stage and a microphone. But the right to free speech ends wherever it begins to infringe on someone ELSE'S right to free speech. Under absolute freedom of speech, only the loudest voice can be heard. Facebook may not have the technology to instantly catch and remove viral terrorist videos. But as a private entity they have every right to remove users and posts that promote terrorist activity. Countless terrorists have been radicalized by social media communities, and Facebook absolutely has the time, the resources and the capability to identify and wipe out these communities before their members inevitably turn to violence. It can certainly be argued that Facebook has a legal obligation to do so, and we must make it clear to them that this is in their best financial interests as well. If users can't accomplish this via boycott, our nations' governments and courts need to drive the point home.

Apparently it was impossible for Artificial Intelligence AI to distinguish between the live video and a Rambo video or violent video game because AI is in its infancy, according to facebook. It looks for stuff in clusters or groups and large groups of violent videos don't get picked up by AI because there's so many violent movies and videos on the internet. I read something this morning, in NZ media that some government department is looking to employ more 'code breakers'. The government is just playing the blame game instead of focusing on prevention and how to see what it could've done better. Government guilt I suspect over slack gun laws as the terrorist chose NZ because of slack semi-automatic gun laws as he'd never of had access to those type of guns in Australia as they banned them all after the Port Arthur massacre.

The outrage against Facebook and Google on the New Zealand shooter videos misses a very important point. No one had the video thrust into their face. The people who watched it were looking for it. Their ghoulish fascination doesn't make them victims. Facebook and Google yanked the content in due course. There are pros and cons on every platform and Facebook and Google invest more than anybody else in the health of their platforms. Absolutist positions by ignorant politicians on soapboxes are unrealistic and don't reflect the trade-offs we make for free speech. If you want to beat up on the big tech companies, fine, there are plenty of other reasons, but this content police argument ignores the fact they themselves are the most sophisticated cops on the beat. They aren't deliberately avoiding investment, ignoring content and sabotaging their ad business. So let's be honest here.

It makes no sense to have the 1st Amendment guarantee free speech on one hand, but the other hand is demanding that social media platforms restrict content on their sites. It is a schizophrenic situation. My conclusion is that with all the clamor for Facebook and others to do something about hateful content, that a lot of people, including many or most politicians, don't really believe in free speech. They think it is a good idea but only in principle and when it comes to the real world, they don't like the consequences. We have to come to terms with this paradox - either fix the 1st Amendment to make hate speech the same as child pornography, or find another way to deal with hateful content than to remove it. My feeling is that free speech is of paramount importance in a democracy and we have to figure out how to deal with content we dislike other than suppressing it.

The assumption here is that circulating the videos openly is less dangerous than allowing them to circulate secretly. I'm not sure that that assumption bears out. The worst thing you can do is make martyrs of these people, and anything that smacks of a 'cover-up' will feed the paranoid delusions that lead to these terror attacks in the first place. If you actually conspire to suppress white supremacist or islamist discussion then they will have a point when they ramble about government conspiracies....and that one hint of truth may be all it takes to get an otherwise normal person to start seriously question *everything*. It is the first step on the road to radicalisation. Allow videos of terror attacks, beheadings and whatever else online and I think people will very quickly become disenchanted and disinterested. It is something of a gamble, I admit, but I think it is the right move. (Not saying they should be popping up on Facebook or Twitter, mind you....leave it to the darker, seedier corners of the web)

'All in moderation' seems a mantra being avoided by social media at our peril. And their financial gain. The question is, how do you control the magnitude of uploads, many of them malignant..before their 'cancer cells' install themselves in our minds, and kill our ability/willingness to oppose them before 'confirmation bias' of conspirational theories installs itself in our credulous minds? A poison that tortures us...before the kill? Especially when 'schadenfreude' is part of the Molotov package?

If the posting of a violent video leads to copycat violence, shouldn't the victims of the copycats be entitled to compensation from the poster of the video? A civil proceeding rather than a criminal one.

It's kind of confusing. Hollywood spends millions creating realistic fake violence, consumers spend even more millions to watch it. The violence under discussion was real, news, and also "officially" considered taboo, or the wrong kind of violence.

I'm already a criminal in the eyes of the New Zealand government so it's a guarantee I will never travel to that country, as if an 18 hour plane flight wasn't enough of a discouragement. I'm a criminal because I watched the video and I read the manifesto, and I'm an even worse criminal because I have a copy of each. I would be looking at a decade in jail just because I try to keep up with the news. The New Zealand government has also criminalized about 25% of their population by immediately making wide classes of previously legal guns illegal. The new citizen criminals are allowed to turn in their illegal contraband under an "amnesty" for a limited period of time. Do you see what is happening here? That shooter is really getting results.

Do people really think the shooter would not have perpetrated his massacre if he could not send out a video on Facebook? The government is going after the video and his manifesto because that is all they can do, It's like creating the illusion that they are acting decisively in response to an incident that has already happened. It's damage control but the damage has already been done. The government is creating a distraction from the fact that the killer's operation was a complete unmitigated success. They even claim that the killer was captured just in the nick of time because he was going to keep killing, a claim other authorities have made with almost identical language in other incidents. But the killer must have had limited plans to continue because he deliberately threw his guns away at the scenes. It was indeed fortunate they caught the guy so soon. Maybe he was going to continue but he didn't have to. He had already done what he set out to do. The video was just a bonus.

Apparently only 200 people viewed the shooting live. It’s not like you would be viewing your Facebook feed and suddenly the shooting would pop up. The viewers knew what they were seeing. After this, there seemed to be a coordinated effort to get the videos uploaded as many times as possible, with deliberate attempts to get around suppression algorithms. This means live streaming wasn’t the problem, but rather a coordinated network of distribution. To me, this is no different than a bunch of ISIS sympathizers distributing an execution video, and governments around the world should coordinate efforts to track down those who belong to this terrorist network and prosecute them. This was a terrorist attack and terrorist propaganda isn’t protected by free speech laws.

As a psychologist I can understand why it is considered appropriate to keep videos of actual killings (by shooters, criminals) and actual deaths (lion eating man, woman falling from a cliff, child run over by car) off of TV, movies and social media. What I cannot understand is why the New Zealand government has made it a crime to publish, possess or distribute the shooter's 74-page written manifesto, with its publication, possession or distribution punishable by many years of imprisonment. Freedom of speech is a cornerstone of democracy; censorship of the written word is a desperate act by fearful people. Amazon and countless other vendors sell copies of Hitler's "Mein Kampf;" what terrible words and ideas are in the New Zealand shooter's "manifesto" that make it worse, and more frightening, than "Mein Kampf"? By the way, the internet search giants have already done a good job of scrubbing links to the New Zealand shooter's manifesto from the internet--so much for the First Amendment.

We are so attached to an absolute belief that “freedom of speech” is a basic right that we allow it not just to criticize us but to propagandize for violence and hate. But there is a difference between those two and civilized societies prohibit such violent hate speech. Just as no one is entitled to come into your home in order to murder your family, allowing that kind of violent speech in places like Facebook is pretty much the same thing. Furthermore, the platforms on which this horrendous speech gets aired and amplified are privately owned. They are not government and they are not obligated to allow such speech. They can cut it off anytime they want because it violates their contractual agreement with users. So why don’t they? Money, my friends. They make lots of moola, you know, the green stuff — by allowing all kinds of garbage to be carried by their platform. However, it is time to agree that violence against others even in speech doesn’t deserve an airing on these platforms because talk eventually finds its way to those whose resentments boil over into vengeance against innocent others, and whose sense of self-righteousness feels justified in destroying the peace and democracy of their own nation. Do not confuse prohibiting pro-Nazi, or anti-Semitic or anti-Moslem or anti-Hispanic or anti-Black violence in speech with “free speech.” It isn’t free when people pay with their lives! It isn’t even Constitutionally necessary.

If Facebook can wipe out all pictures of naked breasts, surely they can figure out how to eliminate mass killer videos and posts, and shed daylight on those who post them.

Kudos to the NZ government and its leader for striking out at the root cause of the mass shootings- the thirst for notoriety. The first Amendment is being used by mass killers in the US and elsewhere to get the notoriety that the killer's cannot achieve by acceptable behavior. If that involves more severe regulation of the internet - so be it. Broadcasting on the dark net of violence and hate speech should be a crime too.

The terms of a private contract are a different subject than the terms of civil rights. Contract terms are whatever the company is willing to agree, and the customer willing to accept. Civil rights are ensured for the benefit of all, and in all circumstances. It is a matter of good government, and of what is good for the goose is good for the gander too. It is in part a question of who decides the close cases, and on what terms, for protection of individuals or society or both in some balance. China emphasizes the good of society over any individual. However, lack of freedom for the individual can also harm society. The West emphasizes the "rights of man" as it was termed in the French Revolution, but as said of our own Constitution written in that same time period, it is not a suicide pact. There is a concern for all, for society too. It is a matter of balancing needs and rights, when talking civil rights. Terms of a contract have nothing whatever to do with such concerns. Terms of Agreement for YouTube and Facebook are just contract now. Maybe if they come to be regarded as public utilities, then public concerns for civil rights will also apply, but not now. It isn't at all about free speech. If it should be, then we also need to assert the status of a public utility and other public concerns as to these platforms. It is all one.

I think it would be better to allow them to post it to well-known sites like Youtube, because more people would see it, hopefully leading to more people reporting the video or otherwise be informed or prepared if they see that person out somewhere.

A principle I believed in, when I was a psychologist, was "Modeling goes in the direction of deviancy." In other words, deviancy is more likely to be modeled than is kindness, or altruism, or caution, etc. The internet is a playground for deviancy. And so we are seeing more and more modeling of it. And it is uncontrollable. Try to control one aspect of it, and another will pop up. It is the classic Whack-A-Mole game, with serious consequences.

Mr Warzel's comments are all very thoughtful and responsible, but would he be saying the same things if the video in question were of an ISIS beheading? Wouldn't most people, I imagine including Mr Warzel, think that exclusion was both more ok and more doable in that case? We can (very correctly) agree that ISIS is a terrorist organization whose propaganda shouldn't be abetted, but we reach that correct conclusion almost reflexively, while in the New Zealand case we agonize over free speech issues. White nationalists continue to benefit from a double standard that assumes that what they do is entitled to all legal and constitutional processes, while what those who are perceived as culturally or ethnically Other should just be destroyed, whether personally or from the record. Publicity is the mother's milk of terrorism. That's just as true for white nationalist terrorism as for other kinds. Legal and constitutional processes are for everyone, and (appropriate) antiterrorist policies should be for every terrorist. The truly big danger is in applying the label "terrorist" in the first place, because some authorities apply it to anyone they disagree with.

Thank you Mr. Warzel for raising some pertinent issues around the dissemination of violent videos and radical propaganda on line, and then providing thought provoking responses. We sometimes forget that the wide spread use of the Internet is only a generation old. It beneficially impacts the lives of billions of people daily, but we are only now beginning to consider the detrimental aspects of this technology. Articles such as this aid us in thinking about the future.

As a psychologist I can understand why it is considered appropriate to keep videos of actual killings (by shooters, criminals) and actual deaths (lion eating man, woman falling from a cliff, child run over by car) off of TV, movies and social media. What I cannot understand is why the New Zealand government has made it a crime to publish, possess or distribute the shooter's 74-page written manifesto, with its publication, possession or distribution punishable by many years of imprisonment. Freedom of speech is a cornerstone of democracy; censorship of the written word is a desperate act by fearful people. Amazon and countless other vendors sell copies of Hitler's "Mein Kampf;" what terrible words and ideas are in the New Zealand shooter's "manifesto" that make it worse, and more frightening, than "Mein Kampf"? By the way, the internet search giants have already done a good job of scrubbing links to the New Zealand shooter's manifesto from the internet--so much for the First Amendment.

I don't have a facebook account. I don't have a twitter account. I am a native, first adopter of computers. I have a wide circle of friends all over the world. We all communicate with each other pier to pier. I like being in control of my content. When I want to find information or be entertained, I seek it out. I don't embrace the notion of visiting sites filled with banal musings. At some point in the future, the social media sites will fade away–something the grandparents did. Why people would want to actually want to watch real live video of a person murdering others is a question they should ask themselves. Would they want to watch bunnies being hammered to death? Would they want to watch babies being drowned? You'd like to hope not but the truth is, there's an audience out there for that too.

In terms of erring on the side of not letting these videos get to the broader public, could we require our tech companies to use computer analysis for the sound of guns. If present, do not upload and alert authorities, and lock account. Yes, people who like to upload video games containing shooting would be affected. I'm not losing sleep over that. Yes, the almost instant ability to share video content may slow down. I'm not losing sleep over that either. Should going "live" be a feature that gets removed from these platforms?

During the 1980s, I was attempting to market videos about woodworking and carpentry, so I attended video industry conferences. I recall being surprised to learn, and not so surprised after thinking about it, that the best-selling videos of the day were live footage from WWII, the Korean War and the Vietnam war. Why? Those videos featured images and sounds of real people dying. The thirst for blood runs deep.