Hong Kong News

Nonpartisan, Noncommercial, unconstrained.
Friday, Mar 29, 2024

Whose job is it to stop the livestreaming of mass murder?

Whose job is it to stop the livestreaming of mass murder?

There are calls for change after Facebook twice hosted livestreams of deadly attacks. But eradicating undesirable online content can be fraught

When a soldier in Thailand killed 29 people and injured more than 50 others last weekend, his bloody rampage was reportedly broadcast live to Facebook for almost five hours before it was taken down.

The attack happened almost a year after the Christchurch shooter livestreamed 72 minutes of his attack on two mosques that left 51 people dead and 50 injured.

The latest incident has revived questions about who should be responsible for removing harmful content from the internet: the networks that host the content, the companies that protect those networks, or governments of the countries where the content is viewed.

Australia’s communications minister, Paul Fletcher, wrote in an opinion piece this week that it was “frankly pretty surprising that a government needs to request that measures be in place to protect against the livestreaming of murder”.

Australia is preparing to introduce an online safety act, which will create rules around terrorist-related material, as well as cyber-abuse, image-based abuse and other kinds of harmful content.

But while the question of whether to take down a livestream of murder is an obvious one, decisions about other kinds of take-down requests can be fraught.

“Some of those requests are kind of scary,” says John Graham-Cumming, the chief technology officer of US web security company Cloudflare. “In Spain you have Catalonia trying to be independent, and the Spanish government saying ‘that is sedition, can you remove it?’”


‘I woke up and decided to kick them off the internet’

Cloudflare doesn’t host content itself, rather it protect sites that do from distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks that could take them offline. Yet, Cloudflare has found itself at the centre of debates around what sort of content is acceptable online, and whether tech companies should be making those decisions.

After American woman Heather Heyer was killed in 2017 while counter-protesting a Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, Cloudflare came under pressure to stop providing protection for the neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer.

Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince ultimately pulled protection for the website, but not without reflecting on the implications of his decision.

After the Christchurch shooting, Cloudflare again debated whether to stop providing services to 8chan, the forum where the perpetrators in the El Paso and Christchurch shootings had posted about their plans. Again the company decided to accede to demands it cut ties, and 8chan was taken offline.

Six months on, Cloudflare’s chief technology officer, John Graham-Cumming, tells Guardian Australia the company would like to see a legal framework in each jurisdiction that sets out what a company’s obligations are – particularly for companies that don’t host the content themselves.


Countries are beginning to legislate


After the Christchurch shooting, Australia quickly passed laws in that could result in company executives being jailed for three years, and the companies fined up to 10% of global revenue, for failing to quickly remove material when alerted by the eSafety commissioner.

In the UK, the government will appoint Ofcom to issue fines to social media companies that fail to remove harmful content.

The online safety act the Australian government is consulting on will give the e-safety commissioner the power to:

direct internet providers to block domains containing terrorism material “in an online crisis event”
ask search engine providers to de-rank websites that provide access to harmful material
force sites to remove cyber abuse or image-based abuse of adults within 24 hours
It will also allow the minister to set via legislative instrument a set of online safety expectations social media companies will need to comply with.

While this will makes things clearer for tech companies, it doesn’t spell the end of their headaches.


Global internet versus local policing


As Graham-Cumming points out, when one government has a law in place, then other governments can make similar demands.

“If the law in Australia says we have to hand over all our [encryption] keys then, for example, China or Saudi Arabia or Russia or Brazil or India or Germany could say ‘well you did it for Australia, how are we different from Australia?’” he said.

“There is this tension between this sense of global internet, and then local policing.”

Graham-Cumming says the world is still getting to grips what role tech companies should play in determining what should be allowed online.

“We are in the middle of this massive change in the world where everything has gone online – good and bad – and as a society and as governments [we] don’t yet know what the answer is,” he says.

“I think what has happened is some quarter of the public is saying to technology companies: ‘you decide for me’. And that’s an unusual situation where private companies are being asked to make public policy like that.”

Newsletter

Related Articles

Hong Kong News
0:00
0:00
Close
It's always the people with the dirty hands pointing their fingers
Paper straws found to contain long-lasting and potentially toxic chemicals - study
FTX's Bankman-Fried headed for jail after judge revokes bail
Blackrock gets half a trillion dollar deal to rebuild Ukraine
Steve Jobs' Son Launches Venture Capital Firm With $200 Million For Cancer Treatments
Google reshuffles Assistant unit, lays off some staffers, to 'supercharge' products with A.I.
End of Viagra? FDA approved a gel against erectile dysfunction
UK sanctions Russians judges over dual British national Kara-Murza's trial
US restricts visa-free travel for Hungarian passport holders because of security concerns
America's First New Nuclear Reactor in Nearly Seven Years Begins Operations
Southeast Asia moves closer to economic unity with new regional payments system
Political leader from South Africa, Julius Malema, led violent racist chants at a massive rally on Saturday
Today Hunter Biden’s best friend and business associate, Devon Archer, testified that Joe Biden met in Georgetown with Russian Moscow Mayor's Wife Yelena Baturina who later paid Hunter Biden $3.5 million in so called “consulting fees”
'I am not your servant': IndiGo crew member, passenger get into row over airline meal
Singapore Carries Out First Execution of a Woman in Two Decades Amid Capital Punishment Debate
Spanish Citizenship Granted to Iranian chess player who removed hijab
US Senate Republican Mitch McConnell freezes up, leaves press conference
Speaker McCarthy says the United States House of Representatives is getting ready to impeach Joe Biden.
San Francisco car crash
This camera man is a genius
3D ad in front of Burj Khalifa
Next level gaming
BMW driver…
Google testing journalism AI. We are doing it already 2 years, and without Google biased propoganda and manipulated censorship
Unlike illegal imigrants coming by boats - US Citizens Will Need Visa To Travel To Europe in 2024
Musk announces Twitter name and logo change to X.com
The politician and the journalist lost control and started fighting on live broadcast.
The future of sports
Unveiling the Black Hole: The Mysterious Fate of EU's Aid to Ukraine
Farewell to a Music Titan: Tony Bennett, Renowned Jazz and Pop Vocalist, Passes Away at 96
Alarming Behavior Among Florida's Sharks Raises Concerns Over Possible Cocaine Exposure
Transgender Exclusion in Miss Italy Stirs Controversy Amidst Changing Global Beauty Pageant Landscape
Joe Biden admitted, in his own words, that he delivered what he promised in exchange for the $10 million bribe he received from the Ukraine Oil Company.
TikTok Takes On Spotify And Apple, Launches Own Music Service
Global Trend: Using Anti-Fake News Laws as Censorship Tools - A Deep Dive into Tunisia's Scenario
Arresting Putin During South African Visit Would Equate to War Declaration, Asserts President Ramaphosa
Hacktivist Collective Anonymous Launches 'Project Disclosure' to Unearth Information on UFOs and ETIs
Typo sends millions of US military emails to Russian ally Mali
Server Arrested For Theft After Refusing To Pay A Table's $100 Restaurant Bill When They Dined & Dashed
The Changing Face of Europe: How Mass Migration is Reshaping the Political Landscape
China Urges EU to Clarify Strategic Partnership Amid Trade Tensions
The Last Pour: Anchor Brewing, America's Pioneer Craft Brewer, Closes After 127 Years
Democracy not: EU's Digital Commissioner Considers Shutting Down Social Media Platforms Amid Social Unrest
Sarah Silverman and Renowned Authors Lodge Copyright Infringement Case Against OpenAI and Meta
Why Do Tech Executives Support Kennedy Jr.?
The New York Times Announces Closure of its Sports Section in Favor of The Athletic
BBC Anchor Huw Edwards Hospitalized Amid Child Sex Abuse Allegations, Family Confirms
Florida Attorney General requests Meta CEO's testimony on company's platforms' alleged facilitation of illicit activities
The Distorted Mirror of actual approval ratings: Examining the True Threat to Democracy Beyond the Persona of Putin
40,000 child slaves in Congo are forced to work in cobalt mines so we can drive electric cars.
×