Inability To Stop Reuploads Calls Into Question Big Tech’s Promises To Do
Better After 2019 Christchurch Attack





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Tech & Terrorism: Tech Companies Fail To Stop Buffalo Attack Video From
Proliferating Online

Inability To Stop Reuploads Calls Into Question Big Tech’s Promises To Do
Better After 2019 Christchurch Attack

 

(New York, N.Y.) — On Saturday, May 14, a gunman targeting African Americans
opened fired at a Buffalo, New York grocery store, killing 10 and wounding
three others, whilelivestreaming
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his attack on the Amazon-owned platform Twitch. Twitch cut off the video within
two minutes of the start of the attack. Despite taking down the stream, the
video was captured and reshared across multiple tech platforms.

 

The Counter Extremism Project (CEP) on Monday
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found that violent white supremacists shared the video on Telegram and
AnonFiles. The video was also spread on Facebook, Twitter, Vimeo, BitChute, and
Streamable. The video has accumulated more than three million views on these
sites in a short time. Meta-owned Facebook allowed some links to remain online
for up to nine hours, and Twitter still had video clips on its platform over 24
hours after the attack.

 

Facebook and Twitter, along with the industry consortium the Global Internet
Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT),have stated
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that they are working to remove the Buffalo video using a shared hashing
database.

 

The attack—and Big Tech’s inability to stop the spread of footage online—draws
a haunting parallel to the March 15, 2019, Christchurch terrorist attack where
the perpetrator livestreamed part of his assault. Additionally, multiple
aspects of the Buffalo attack are directly inspired by the Christchurch attack,
as directly stated in the accused gunman’s online manifesto and his use of
similar tactics and iconography. The presumed gunman also explicitly stated
that he hoped to inspire future violence.

 

“After the Christchurch attack, tech companies needed to answer two questions:
have they learned any lessons about their failure there, and what new processes
will they put in place to prevent a similar incident? While the Buffalo
livestream was removed from Twitch within two minutes of the start of violence,
they were widely unsuccessful in stopping its proliferation and reuploads
online. Already, it’s been watched and shared by millions of people,” said CEP
Senior Advisor and University of California, Berkeley professorDr. Hany Farid
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saw in 2019, and it is a problem we are seeing once again despite years of
promises from the tech industry.”

 

Following the Christchurch terrorist attack, the GIFCT and major tech
companies, including Meta (then Facebook), Microsoft, Twitter, Amazon, and
YouTube, signed theChristchurch Call to Action
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aimed at fighting terrorism and violent extremism online. The nine action points
included
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a pledge to invest in new technologies to improve terrorist content detection
and removal, a commitment to implementing livestreaming checks to reduce risks
of disseminating terrorist content, and, among other things, a promise to
improve sharing technological developments between large and small companies.
The fact that reuploads of the Buffalo attack video continued to occur,
including on platforms owned by signatories to the Christchurch Call to Action,
calls into question the tech industry’s level of commitment and technological
ability to stop the ongoing spread of terrorist content.

 

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