Twitter Pulls Down Harmful Footage of Christchurch Terror Attack

New Zealand government has successfully asked Twitter to pull down a harmful footage of the 2019 Christchurch terror attack that was doing rounds on the platform.  

According to the office of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, the disturbing video clips showing a white supremacist murdering 51 Muslim worshippers at two mosques in Christchurch were uploaded by some Twitter users on Saturday.

A spokesperson for the prime minister reportedly said Twitter’s automated reporting function didn’t pick up the content as harmful.

 “Twitter advised us overnight that the clips have been taken down and said they would do a sweep for other instances, the office said.

Following the attack that was livestreamed on multiple social media platforms, Ardern launched what was baptized the “Christchurch Call”, in which she asked social media companies to address online extremism and misinformation and disinformation.  

Asked what she thinks about the future of Twitter with regard to curbing extremism and misinformation, Ardern said: “while time will tell over Twitter’s commitment to removing harmful content, the company had advised the government it had not changed its view over its membership to the Christchurch Call community.”

“We will continue to maintain our expectation that [Twitter does] everything they can on a day-to-day basis to remove that content but also to reduce terrorist content and violent extremist content online, as they’ve committed to,” she said.

Also Read: Image of Twitter, One Month after Elon Musk’s Eventful Takeover 

Speaking earlier this month in a national security disinformation and online extremism summit, Ardern said that “Twitter has been deeply involved in the Christchurch Call and – to date – been a really constructive partner”. However, she added that partnership was in “unknown territory” after Elon Musk’s takeover of the company.

That mentioned, Ardern reportedly encouraged Musk to “stick strongly to the principle of transparency”, emphasizing that social media platforms like Twitter “can be a force for democracy, a force for connection and for good…But also, if misused, they can do a huge amount of harm.”

According to Markus Luczak-Roesch, an Associate Professor in Information Systems at Victoria University of Wellington, Musk’s takeover “has been disruptive to the Christchurch Call, with the entire Twitter team the government was planning to work with gone after lay-offs.”

Musk insists, in a recent post on Twitter, that hate speech on platform has gone down by a third from its pre-spike levels in October.